Interagency deployment of a shared low-cost flood monitoring system to improve flood resilience across Southeast Texas: A case study

This publication details how eight counties in Southeast Texas formed a non-tax authority flood control partnership to provide a forum for communication, create a regional database and improve flood modeling, early warning, and flood mitigation decisions. This partnership is able to successfully deploy and manage an early warning flood system network at relatively low-cost. The data is shared with the public, and local, state, and federal agencies to monitor drainage infrastructure, and provide the community with flash flood and roadway closure alerts.

The publication concludes the following: 

• The partnership was able to leverage existing expertise (emergency managers, flood plain administrators, engineers, county commissioners, and professors) and assets (web portal to view sensor data and surveying equipment) across multiple agencies to deploy and monitor 73 low-cost flood sensor systems across seven county regions including many in rural areas;
• A local university played a critical role in managing the flood sensor network, serving as a knowledge transfer entity by providing workshop training, installation best practices, and outreach for the public. In some instances, the university assisted in the installation process;

• The IoT flood monitoring system used in this project is a low-cost unit that did not require an expert technician to install, maintain, or calibrate, which is advantageous to the partnering agencies to limit installation and maintenance costs;