New Iowa River Flood Maps Unveiled

The city of Iowa City has taken one more stroke toward flood preparedness.

The Iowa River flood inundation map unveiled today in Iowa City is the first of its kind in Iowa, and will help Iowans plan for flood emergencies.

Maren Stoflet, the Service Hydrologist with the Quad Cities-based National Weather Service, said the online, interactive map will give people a picture of what the different flood stages mean to their neighborhoods along the Iowa River.

“At the National Weather Service, we issue forecasts for what the river level is expected to be, but what does that forecast look like?” she said. “The key here is the visualization of what that means. Anyone can go online and look at these.”

The map is available at http://water.weather.gov/ahps/inundation.php. People must scroll down to Quad Cities for the map of the Iowa River.

Predictions used to be based on the 100-year and 500-year flood maps, but the new map will generate a detailed map every 6 inches of water over the flood stage, with users able to zoom into Iowa City neighborhoods along the Iowa River.

The cost of the project was a bargain at about $8,000, according to Rick Fosse, Publics Works Director for the City of Iowa City.

“This tool became available because of the 2008 flood and all the modeling that was done after,” he said. “So for our level of investment, it’s a pretty good pay back on that – just the time it’s going to save in staff time in doing the interpellation of the mapping. The other part of that information is getting that information out to anyone – there’s a lot of value there.”

The UI Iowa Flood Center’s role in the collaboration with city and federal entities was to develop the computer models for the inundation maps.

 “It’s been a great pleasure for the Iowa Flood Center to coordinate with the National Weather Service and the city of Iowa City in what we feel has been a very strong partnership,” said Nathan Young, the associate director with the Iowa Flood Center with the University of Iowa. “We’re looking forward in continuing that partnership in a number of different ways, the first being introducing these types of maps to other Iowa communities.”

Young said the flood center coordinated with the National Weather Service to identify the next group of communities they plan to introduce the advance hydro platforms for, with primary candidates including Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Elkader. Developing map libraries for Des Moines, Charles City and southern Johnson County; as well as Mason City, Ottumwa and Ames, were also in the works.

Young said they would continually update the maps to make sure information is current and accurate for community planning.

The University of Iowa was awarded more than $500,000 by the National Science Foundation for flood-related research in the first 12 months after the 2008 flood alone.

Young added that pursuing funds for a National Flood Center to develop a broad range of flood related research and applications, not only for the state of Iowa but the nation, was also a goal.