To prioritize the task of making transportation networks more resilient it is critical to understand, not only which areas will flood, but which additional areas will be inaccessible during the time of the flooding because some portion of their road network is underwater. This tool can be used to understand flood impacts to both road infrastructure and the surrounding community.
This project, Task #92.01 was funded in part by the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program at the Department of Environmental Quality through Grant FY2019 #NA19NOS4190163 of the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, under the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, as amended.
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA, or any of its subagencies.
The Locality Road Flood Tool is an interactive map for incorporating current and future road flooding into locality planning efforts. The impacts of recurrent flooding on roadways present challenging social and economic considerations for all coastal jurisdictions. Maintenance, public and private accessibility, evacuation routes, and emergency services are just a few of the common themes local governments are beginning to address for low-lying roadways currently known to flood. Continuation of these services allows a community to thrive, to maintain or increase its tax base, and to insure the safety and well-being of its citizenry.
The tool has layers developed in this analysis (Inaccessible roads, Flooding duration maps), additional information layers (Infrastructure, Accessible roads, Social Vulnerability, and 2020 FEMA flood hazard zones), a dashboard of road impacts, and downloadable Detailed Road Flooding Summaries. Each region is grouped on to a page and the locality information can be displayed individually or information for the entire region can be displayed, except in the Northern Virginia Region where both Fairfax and Alexandria are always displayed together. The Detailed Road Flooding Summaries include the length of each road flooded at 0.1m increments.
