NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Residents in flood-prone Hampton Roads have a new tool to view and report flooding hot spots.
The Norfolk-based environmental group Wetlands Watch has developed a mobile application that allows people to easily map, take pictures of and outline areas that are inundated during high tide and heavy rains. A test of the Sea Level Rise app was conducted Wednesday near downtown Norfolk by an inlet called the Hague, which routinely floods nearby streets at high tide.
With pedestrians and vehicles forced to find alternate routes due to high water Wednesday morning, volunteers walked along the outlines of the flooded area and dropped pins on a map on their smartphones about every 10 yards to mark where the water had accumulated.
Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, said that while the initial focus is on coastal Virginia, it could eventually expand to other areas where sea-level rise is also an issue.
The information gathered from volunteers who use the app can be used by emergency managers and researchers. Ultimately, the environmental group wants to collaborate with universities that can do predictive modeling to send warnings through the app to alert users to the specific streets, blocks and homes likely to flood. In the future, the information could be incorporated into other applications to let people know what roads to avoid, much like with traffic accidents.
The app has already started adding known flooding trouble spots in Norfolk that anyone can view, which could be helpful for travelers and newcomers to the area who aren’t familiar with the unique flood patterns in the city. Many people who have lived in the area for a long time already know which roads are likely to flood, and move where they park their cars based on tidal maps and rainstorm intensity.
Stiles said while anyone can view the information posted, his group is looking for volunteers like civic leagues with a vested interest that can quickly be trained to use the app to make sure the information is valid.
The app was developed by Norfolk-based information technology company Concursive and was funded, in part, through a grant by the Charlottesville-based Blue Moon Fund.
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Online: Wetlands Watch www.wetlandswatch.org
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Brock Vergakis can be reached at www.twitter.com/BrockVergakis
