Automated Flood Response

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2010

King County developed its Flood Response program to warn residents and agencies of impending floodwaters on major rivers so they can take action and prepare themselves before serious flooding occurs. The program consists of several technology-based work products used countywide, including river gage data application, flood alerts, green river inundation area lookup, flood photo viewer, sandbag distribution location application, and flood patrol reporting. This program’s innovation lies in the depth and diversity of technologies and system sot provide end-to-end flood information, warning, and alerting for the public, all integrated with uniform navigation and command web interface, enabling the public to find and use these applications as they came online. This system combines near-real-time gage data with the contextual information needed to interpret it, internal data-access and data-management tools, public flood warning via the web and phone call-in system, and proactive alerting via e-mail, SMS/text, and voice callout.