Friday’s Food for Thought: Louisiana Flooding

Southeastern Louisiana experienced high rainfall Aug. 12, causing flooding in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas. According to The Washington Post, at least 40,000 homes have been damaged and 13 people have been killed. The American Red Cross believes this to be America’s worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created slider images showing “before” and “after” satellite images of Louisiana towns. The “before” images are provided by Mapbox, DigitalGlobe, and OpenStreetMap, while the “after” images were captured by NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey, using specialized remote sensing cameras aboard NOAA’s King Air aircraft.

Time reports a UAV captured footage of the flooding in various areas showing the extent of the damage. View the videos on YouTube.

Wired reports the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is looking at ways to better predict flood plains. According to the article, FEMA creates flood risk maps that visualize the likelihood of an area being flooded; however, the maps are only updated every decade or so after a flooding has occurred. The agency is exploring predictive flood mapping that projects flood risk based on modeling.

Photo Credit: NOAA