Innovative Approach to Flood Mapping Supports Emergency Management, Water Officials

during his free time in the evenings and weekends as a public service — hopes to automate the task of generating flood maps to lessen the workload when streams and rivers threaten to overspill their banks.

“With my other obligations at KBS, a lot of off-the-clock effort was needed to see this through,” he said. “Time is of the essence during major flood events. We need to develop software tools to help automate the mapping process and hand it off to these other agencies so they have the freedom to map whichever scenarios they want. I think our work in May demonstrated the value of our mapping approach, and hopefully we can pull together a project to help us move forward with the automation. So, when that next flood hits, emergency response personnel can just run the models as they see fit. That’s how we always envisioned this thing — we construct the inundation libraries for others to use during flood emergencies or simulations.”

Kastens’ novel approach to flood mapping has proven to be such an improvement, recently he’s worked with a private firm to commercialize the technology and provide services outside of Kansas to emergency management officials and entities with property in flood-prone areas.

“In 2015, we entered an agreement with Riverside Technology Inc. based in Fort Collins, Colorado, working through KU Center for Technology Commercialization to try to commercialize this stuff,” Kastens said. “They did their homework and market research and saw a real opportunity to develop inundation mapping solutions built around our flood libraries. Our contract with Riverside expires next year, so we will just have to see what happens after that. We made sure we carved out Kansas from the agreement, which allows us the freedom to provide direct assistance during flood events like we did in May.”

Kastens likens the projected inundation maps to predicted storm tracks or tornado watch or warning maps.

“They are never perfectly accurate, but then again neither are more sophisticated models. No two floods are the same, and a lot of resources are being expended in the public and private sectors to do what we are already capable of doing cheaply and efficiently right now here in Kansas.”

KU notes that the Kansas Biological Survey, a KU Designated Research Center, was established at KU in 1911. It houses a diverse group of environmental research and remote sensing/GIS programs. The survey also manages the 3,700-acre KU Field Station, established in 1947; it offers sites for faculty and student study in the sciences, arts, humanities and professional schools.