Tracking Flooding in Coastal Communities During Hurricanes Helene and Milton
In 2023, Dixon received a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant to build the app. Since then, her team has made significant progress. They have installed 14 cameras in St. Petersburg, with 30 more planned throughout Pinellas County.
The cameras are placed in front of five-foot poles with reflective tape that show flooding as it’s happening. Each strip is placed six inches apart. Images captured by the cameras during Hurricane Helene indicate that about 3.5 feet of water rose above the seawall in many locations.
The new app, which provides an interactive user experience, is based on the existing Community Resiliency Information System (CRIS), a website created in 2020 by iCAR.
The CRIS platform leverages crowdsourced data to identify climate-related vulnerabilities in local communities. Residents can input information related to issues such as flooding and power outages. This information can then be used by policymakers and neighborhood leaders to make decisions about policy and resource allocation. The data also allows emergency managers to identify areas with concentrations of people who need transportation assistance or are reliant on power for medical needs.
Dixon has been working with community leaders in St. Petersburg’s Childs and Bartlett Park neighborhoods for several years, where residents have successfully used the system to prepare for extreme storm events. Through the CRIS website,
participants can view maps and see their risk of storm surge and sea level rise. They can also share their own information and suggest ways to improve the system.
“We have used the application at all our community town halls,” said Erica Hall, executive director of the Florida Food Policy Council. “As a community leader and liaison, this will help communities tremendously to understand the connection between sea level rise, climate change, extreme heat and coastal flooding. Some coastally vulnerable neighborhoods also show food insecurity and health disparity concerns. Having CRIS map those concerns tells a story that will allow the community to understand.”
As principal investigator, Dixon developed the app alongside co-principal investigators Yi Qiang from the USF School of Geosciences and two others from Georgia Tech, Subhrajit Guhathakurta from the College of Design and Peng Chen from the College of Computing.
The research team will continue to work with community partners in St. Petersburg and other flood-prone coastal areas of Pinellas County to refine the app. As the CRIS-HAZARD app gains users and data, the team hopes to make it available to communities nationwide.
Sarah Sell is Communications & Marketing Officer at University of South Florida (USF). The article was originally posted to the website of USF.
