Larry Weber. (U-I photo)
The Iowa Flood Center is unveiling a new tool to help Iowans living along the Missouri River prepare for flooding.
Larry Weber, co-founder of the Iowa Flood Center, says the interactive map will give people who may be impacted by flooding the information they need in times of crisis.
“If your home happens to be within the area that’s flooded, then with your mouse, you can just click by your house, and it’ll tell you the depth of water,” Weber says. “All of that is to help them to respond to floods to protect your property.”
The system is one part of a larger initiative to help impacted communities recover. Weber says the number one priority was making the technology accessible to everyone and the project took collaboration from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Weather Service, and the University of Iowa-based Iowa Flood Center.
“The Corps and the Weather Service and ourselves, we’re all flood experts, but we can’t be there helping every individual homeowner and landowner, they need to help themselves,” Weber says, “but we can provide the tools to them that allow them to be able to do that.”
Weber says the flood prediction tool can also help them see how increasing the number of wetlands or watersheds in the area could stem flooding. The Iowa Flood Center started to develop the system after the damaging floods of 2019.
(By Kendall Crawford, Iowa Public Radio)