Street flooding in Gulfport, Florida from Hurricane Idalia storm surge. By Seán Kinane/WMNF News (30 Aug. 2023)
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Years of research from the University of South Florida led to flood monitoring cameras across Pinellas County.
Flooding in St Petersburg is often caused by hurricanes and summer thunderstorms.
To address the disaster, USF Professor Barnali Dixon began developing static cameras that monitor water levels.
These cameras take one picture every 15 minutes and operate 24 hours a day.
“Our goal over here is to collect people’s lived experience as a photograph, then use machine learning algorithms to make data out of it, so we can further validate and calibrate maps and models,” Dixon said.
The project includes a neighborhood reporting app that Dixon calls “WAZE for flooding”.
She said that much like the traffic app Waze, residents upload a real-time photo of flooding, warning others in the community to avoid that area.
“These cameras [are] helping them see what is going on in their backyard, and especially the app, because app actually helps neighbors helping another neighbor,” Dixon said.
The name of the web app is Flood Report and you can find on Google.
Most of the cameras are concentrated in the St Petersburg area with 37 feeding information to the Flood App.
Earlier this month, researchers installed a camera in Clam Bayou.
Alec Colarusso, a PhD student working in the project, said the researchers chose the camera placement after the city of St. Petersburg recommended it.
“It’s usually a nice coastal low-lying area,” Colarusso said. “There are flood protections in place, but most of the time they don’t always ideally work as well.”
The team will install another camera in Riviera Bay.
In 2023, the lead researcher Barnali Dixon received a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant to conduct the project, but this will not last long.
“The contract is going to be ending in 2026, and then the city and county hopefully will assume the operating costs for those cameras,” Dixon said.
The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that funds research in science and engineering, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation.
The researchers are still waiting on funding to know if they will be able to add cameras in other counties.