US: Midland County, Michigan will benefit from an agreement with the state to get access to new flood data collected last fall with LiDAR.
The data will help reduce the risk of future flooding and also assist in recovery efforts. It will be shared by emergency management, the drain commission and the road commission, and the cost to the county is less than $5,000.
“There’s a federal push for elevation data across the country,” said county IT/GIS Director Chris Cantrell. The LiDAR imaging will allow for GIS mapping that the county didn’t have before. “Those capabilities are huge for emergency management when you’re planning for emergencies and responding to them, especially when you’re going through damage assessments,” said Emergency Management Director Jennifer Boyer.
She said having the capability to map damages and severity of damages in certain areas of the community after flooding is huge. “Especially through the declaration process, but also in the city where they had sewer backups and whatnot.”
A downpour of more than 8 inches of rain last summer caused flash flooding that led to 16 road closures and millions of dollars in road damage.
Cantrell said the data will especially be useful for mitigation purposes. “Because we’ll be able to identify where the water will be at different flood stages and we can preplan on road closures and residential and commercial impacts. We can identify those areas that need to be closed and communicate it to the public.”
