Abstract
During flood events the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) manages road closures and reopenings, seeking to minimize disruption to traffic flow and maintaining safety of roads and bridges. TxDOT wants to move from a “reactive” mode of flood operations in which decisions are taken on the basis of field staff reports on current flooding conditions, to a “proactive” approach where decisions are based on advance knowledge of expected flood conditions. This is being achieved by using forecasting from the National Water Model, streamflow measurement from 80 radar stream gauges on TxDOT bridges that measure both water surface elevation and water velocity, hydraulic analysis of flow at bridges using LIDAR characterization of bridge structures, and overlaid web maps that synthesize the forecasting, measurement and modeling into actionable information to support decision making in flood emergencies. An example is presented of Tropical Storm Imelda that impacted Southeast Texas in September 2019.
Bio
David R. Maidment is the Hussein M. Alharthy Centennial Chair in Civil Engineering Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin where he served on the faculty from 1981 to 2019. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering with First Class Honors from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and his MS and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Texas, he was a research scientist at the Ministry of Works and Development in New Zealand, and at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria, and he was also a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University.
