Project to assist in flood preparedness
A new Tri-College project has the ability to predict where water will be during a flood and find the exact measurements of the Red River Basin.
The information would help emergency vehicles and people who live in the valley during floods.
The International Water Institute is developing a project called the Light Detection and Ranging that will map the Red River Basin to help understand elevation and flooding.
The project will cost $5 million, and Charles Fritz, director of the International Water Institute, said it will be up and running by summer or fall 2008.
The institute recently received more than $600,000 from four different entities, including the Red River Watershed Management Board, the Buffalo Red Watershed District, the City of Moorhead and the City of Fargo, Fritz said.
Five main partners were identified in the proposed funding formula.
The partners are Minnesota locals, the state of Minnesota, North Dakota locals, the state of North Dakota and the federal government.
LIDAR uses aircrafts that fly over a basin and plot points on the terrain with a laser to measure the elevation of the land. The data is then entered into a computer and a map is created.
Because of the 1997 flood, the need for the LIDAR mapping project has become pressing.
“ The jurisdictions got together to try to address what was going on in 1997,” Fritz said. “And they couldn’t even create a map of the Red River Basin because there are different mapping standards in the U.S. and Canada. So, even though there are maps in Canada of the Red River Basin and there are maps in the U.S. of the Red River Basin, there aren’t any that can be made up and made seamless.”
The International Joint Commission and the International Flood Mitigation Initiative found one of the greatest needs that came out of the ’97 flood was the need for a seamless map and they talked about the lack of accurate topography or high-resolution topography in the basin, Fritz said.
“ In fact, even today, about the best you can do in the river basin is a 10-foot contour map of existing data,” he said. “Ten feet in the river basin, or at least in the Red River Valley, that has less than one foot per mile of relief is not very good.”
The International Water Institute was formed in 2000, and at the time, the LIDAR project cost more than $35 million. But with technology prices going down, it is now more affordable, Fritz said.
Once the project starts and the data collection begins, Fritz said he hopes there will be internships for students to help with the research and input the data into computers.
“ I would like to see computer students being involved to help develop this database,” Fritz said. “Right now, there really isn’t any way students can be involved, but later there will be opportunities to help with the research.”
Another aspect about this project is on the Web site.
There, people will be able to find a spot anywhere in the city of Fargo or Moorhead and find where the water is expected to be during a flood, Fritz said.
“ Our floods are of longer duration and very slow moving,” he said. “It is all about preparedness. This is a fundamental piece of information and will benefit things far beyond floods.”
The project will also help the Fargo-Moorhead area by allowing people to go online during a flood and find out which roads are closed and different routes they can take, Fritz said.
The LIDAR project will begin soon and data collection should begin next summer or fall.
“ This is assuming that there are no floods, the weather is good and everything goes well,” Fritz said.