Short communication
Towards an integrated Flood Information System: Centralized data access, analysis, and visualization

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2013.08.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A comprehensive one-stop web platform is developed for flood related data and information.

  • Community centric approach provides a customized experience to communities.

  • The IFIS provides flood warnings, forecasts, inundation maps, and rainfall products.

  • The IFIS helps communities make better-informed decisions on the occurrence of floods.

  • The IFIS alerts communities in advance to help them reduce the damage of floods.

Abstract

The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is a web-based platform developed at the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) in order to provide access to flood inundation maps, real-time flood conditions, flood forecasts, flood-related data, information, applications, and interactive visualizations for communities in Iowa. The IFIS provides community-centric watershed and river characteristics, rainfall conditions, and stream-flow data and visualization tools. Interactive interfaces allow access to inundation maps for different stage and return period values as well as to flooding scenarios with contributions from multiple rivers. Real-time and historical data of water levels, gauge heights, hourly and seasonal flood forecasts, and rainfall conditions are made available by integrating data from NEXRAD radars, IFC stream sensors, and USGS and National Weather Service (NWS) stream gauges. The IFIS provides customized flood-related data, information, and visualization for over 1000 communities in Iowa. To help reduce the damage from floods, the IFIS helps communities make better-informed decisions about the occurrence of floods and alerts communities in advance using NWS and IFC forecasts. The integrated and modular design and structure of the IFIS allows easy adaptation of the system in other regional and scientific domains. This paper provides an overview of the design and capabilities of the IFIS that was developed as a platform to provide one-stop access to flood-related information.

Introduction

A significant amount of hydrological and meteorological data is collected every day by a wide range of sensors and instruments that range from in-stream sensors to ground- and space-based remote sensing platforms. Daily environmental data collection was over 25 terabytes in 2009, according to Smits et al. (2009). Information contained in the available data cannot be fully utilized if they are not easily accessible and properly structured. Environmental Information Systems (EIS) are gaining importance for addressing grand scientific challenges in environmental monitoring and prediction (e.g., Granell et al., 2013, Nativi et al., 2013) by providing integrated multi-disciplinary platforms that combine data management, visualization, analysis, modeling, and information communication capabilities (e.g., Granell et al., 2010). Recent developments in information and Internet technologies provide a great opportunity to enhance the management, analysis, visualization, modeling, and sharing of flood-related data and information and to improve the timeliness of flood warnings and preparation for flood events.

In this paper, we present a comprehensive online platform, the Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS), developed with the goal of achieving an adaptive Flood Information System with integrated data access, analysis, and visualization. This paper provides an overview of the tools and interfaces developed to date in the IFIS, which provides access to weather, flood inundation maps, real-time flood conditions, flood forecasts, flood-related data, information, applications, and interactive visualizations for communities in Iowa. This paper offers a comprehensive information system for improving real-time information management and knowledge transfer pertinent to flood events. The system is developed in an adaptive and integrated structure that could be applied to similar efforts in other regions and environmental application domains.

Section snippets

Related work

Information systems play an important role in many geoscience disciplines, including hydrology and atmospheric science (Demir, 2010, Tarboton et al., 2009, Williams et al., 2009). Recent examples of these systems have capabilities for web-based management, visualization, and shared environmental time-series data using web services (Demir and Beck, 2009, Demir et al., 2009). A critical application domain for these systems with real-time information management and sharing capabilities is flood

System requirements and design

The purpose of the IFIS is to provide a one-stop web-platform to access flood-related data, information, and applications. As the main stakeholder target of the IFIS is the public, one of the requirements is to provide an interactive and user-friendly interface that requires minimal technical skills and knowledge to use. The IFIS should be accessible through various platforms (e.g., laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.) with limited bandwidth capabilities. Visualization and examination of data

Conclusions

The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is an online platform that was developed to provide easy access to real-time flood and stream conditions, flood forecasts, flood inundation maps, and flood-related data, information, and interactive visualizations in Iowa. The IFIS is designed in an adaptive and integrated structure. The structure of the system allows other state and regional institutions to easily develop similar systems for transferring knowledge and disseminating flood-related data

Acknowledgments

The work reported here has been made possible by the support from the Iowa Flood Center at The University of Iowa. The IFIS integrates the work of many members of the IFC; herein, the authors acknowledge the particularly significant contributions of Radoslaw Goska to the IFIS.

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