Flood Forecasting for Transportation Resilience: A Guide (2024)
Chapter: 7 Conclusion
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"7 Conclusion." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. Flood Forecasting for Transportation Resilience: A Guide. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
doi: 10.17226/28022.
CHAPTER 7
Conclusion
Regardless of whether a DOT is just entering the flood forecasting field or has an active flood forecasting program, there are steps the DOT can take to enhance foundational data and improve flood monitoring, operations, and communications capabilities. This chapter summarizes insights on the benefits, challenges, and opportunities associated with flood forecasting collected through this research effort.
Benefits
- DOTs may use flood forecasts to inform actions such as issuing internal flood level notifications, directing field staff to flood locations, and issuing road closures. A flood forecasting capability can help inform a more proactive approach to managing flood impacts by supporting better preparation for events, faster response times, and more efficient use of resources.
- By initiating a flood forecasting capability, a DOT is engaged in other conversations with key partners. Communication is important at every step of flood forecasting. Developing or enhancing a flood forecasting capability can help initiate conversations around establishing protocols for using flood forecasting information to support decision-making and assign staff roles and responsibilities.
- Participating in a community of practice can connect DOTs to state-of-the-art practices, procedures, and technologies.
Challenges
- It can be difficult to establish priorities. Identifying critical assets and corresponding impact thresholds is essential to developing an operational flood forecasting capability. This requires coordination across the entire DOT organization to gather data and align on priorities.
- Uncertainty is inherently a part of flood forecasting, and it can be difficult to determine the level of accuracy needed to inform decision-making. Recording flood impacts during and after a flooding event provides ground-truthing that can support improved monitoring and response for future events.
Opportunities
- DOTs are often rich in the type of information needed to perform flood forecasting, but this information can be difficult to catalog and access. Establishing a flood forecasting capability can help institutionalize knowledge of existing data assets.
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65
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Suggested Citation:
"7 Conclusion." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. Flood Forecasting for Transportation Resilience: A Guide. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
doi: 10.17226/28022.
- Whether a DOT is looking to build a flood forecasting capability in-house or partner with a service provider, there are options to approach developing flood forecasting that should be tailored to the DOT’s data holdings and needs.
- Partnerships can play an important role in advancing research and increasing capacity to support both short-term and long-term flood resilience and mitigation planning.
Page
64
Share
Suggested Citation:
"7 Conclusion." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. Flood Forecasting for Transportation Resilience: A Guide. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
doi: 10.17226/28022.
Page
65
Share
Suggested Citation:
"7 Conclusion." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. Flood Forecasting for Transportation Resilience: A Guide. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
doi: 10.17226/28022.
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