In the wake of July’s deadly flooding in Central Texas, state leaders are turning to researchers in North Texas.
The Texas Water Development Board has tapped the University of Texas at Arlington’s Water Engineering Research Center (WERC) to make rainfall data collection more accurate and improve flood prediction.
The team will gather data from several places, including radars, rain gauges, and satellite.
“Our specialty here is, once we take in that information, how are we going to utilize, polish the information, turn it into a kind of accessible format, and also a usable format,” said Nick Fang, a civil engineering professor and the director of WERC.
The idea is to use more comprehensive and precise data and run it through their hydrological model, supported by Artificial Intelligence, to come up with a forecasting model for leaders. Once they make a decision based on those predictions, they’d send out warning information and communicate in real-time to first responders and others on the ground.
Fang said the idea is to improve data collection, put data together, and run it through a model supported by Artificial Intelligence to come up with a forecast. Once leaders make a decision based on those predictions, he said, a warning could be sent out, and communication could happen in real-time. (Credit: Nick Fang, UTA WERC)
“Timing is very important. The earlier you know the big flood wave is going to come at you, and you can really do a lot of preparation beforehand,” Fang said. “So, we are not going to save people from the damages, but really, the warning message we provide from this system, and that’s really going to give people a lot of lead time—they can do the evacuation and also transport people to different places.”
Take Kerr County, for example: Fang and his team created a rainfall map showing the terrain of the area and how water converged onto Camp Mystic.
A rainfall map of the area surrounding Camp Mystic (the symbol in the middle of the red area) in Kerr County. (Credit: Nick Fang, UTA WERC)
“Within this particular watershed, we call it South Fork, and South Fork, you can see, you have about nine to eight inches of rainfall, total, falling into this particular area,” Fang explained. “Very highly concentrated rainfall falling into this South Fork, and then generated a very, very quick peak flow and running down to the Camp Mystic.”
Pulling historical rainfall data, he said, shows that the rainfall was not necessarily rare.
“When you pull out all the historical rainfall events, and you map them around this particular Guadalupe River, you will see many events happening in the past, they are kind of bigger than the three-inch-per-hour intensity,” Fang said.
A historic rainfall map of the area surrounding Camp Mystic in Kerr County. (Credit: Nick Fang, UTA WERC)
Fang said if this sort of data had been available before July 4, it could have meant better prevention for Kerr County.
“I would say definitely going to raise people’s concern, and more so, we need to rethink about how we’re going to build up infrastructure these days,” he said.
Fang recently testified in front of a joint hearing on disaster preparedness and flooding after the Central Texas floods.
He encouraged funding for a flood warning system.
“The flood warning system is not a one-time investment; it’s a recurring investment and continues,” Fang had told lawmakers.
He said coming up with a system for the whole state is challenging because of its size and diverse terrain and climate.
“You could have very good, dry weather in West Texas, but very wet conditions for southeast Texas and the coastline there, as well. So, we need to have a very, very different strategy in dealing with set up those hydrological models,” he said.
Why his team at UTA?
“We only do good, quality work,” Fang said.
He said they’ve done work for the water board before this grant, and have also been tapped by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The university said the project will also “improve models that support water supply, reservoir management and ecological health.”
