Flood Map ToolKit

Client: Langley Air Force Base
Project: FloodMap Tool

Challenge:
In 2003, Hurricane Isabel cut a devastating path across the North Carolina outer bank Islands, Virginia and Maryland, leaving behind a wake of destruction. LAFB also experienced significant damage from the wind and storm surge. Armed with lessons learned from the planning and response to Hurricane Isabel, Langley Geospatial Information Office (GIO) Chief, Patricia McSherry, set out to develop a tool that would allow the base to better predict the effects of flooding from storm surges and other occurrences so that emergency preparations could be focused on those areas most vulnerable in any given flooding event.

Penobscot Bay Media’s Solution:
Ms. McSherry contracted with Pen Bay Media to build and implement the FloodMap Tool to support the GIO in time for the 2005 hurricane season. The FloodMap is a web-deployed geospatial application that enables users to dynamically create flood modeling scenarios, manage facility contact call-trees and provide real-time access to distributed emergency response teams, facilities managers and command personnel.

On 13 September 2005, Tropical Storm Ophelia changed course and was upgraded to a Hurricane. Within minutes of the Hurricane Condition Declaration, LAFB personnel were requesting predictive flood maps and other supporting geospatial information. In the past, the best the GIO could provide was a printed ‘Flood Contour’ map which could do little more than show rough approximations of predicted flooding using 2-foot intervals in ground elevation.

With Pen Bay Media’s FloodMap up and running, the GIO had a new type of map, delivered over the LAFB Intranet, that emergency personnel and others could use for visualizing the flood conditions in real-time and predicting, within inches, the extent to which flood waters might go as the storm progressed. During the few hours at the peak of the storm response nearly 3,500 base personnel had accessed the FloodMap online.