In Norfolk, Virginia flooding is a seemingly ever present issue.  Tidal flooding occurs and when compounded by heavy rain or hurricanes, serious damage can be done to property in the area.  Our project, was to develop a way to accurately track tidal flooding in our area.  To accomplish this task we took aerial images of areas prone to tidal flooding.  In these area, we marked and recorded recognizable location’s GPS coordinates.  We then marked these coordinates in our aerial photographs, and used GIS software to place our pictures onto preexisting topographical maps.  When we trace the flooding lines on these maps, we can get a very detailed and accurate representation of flooding in our area.  Our team’s hopes are that these techniques can be used by cities around the world to help track and predict tidal flooding.  Tracking tidal flooding can help city planners, developers, and residents to make informed decisions regarding future possible flooding in their areas.  This can save communities time and money, and we believe, this technique will be an excellent tool for many cities struggling with the same flooding issues as our own.

On December 7th, 2016 we met with other groups from ODU, JMU and GMU to present our projects.  During this process we received a plethora of positive feedback and suggestions.  We presented our project using a beautifully designed stand, provided for us by students at JMU.  Our drone was presented on this stand, and was surrounded by posters we designed to explain our project, its hardships, and our overall outcome.  This event was a wonderful time to meet with other dedicated students, well respected experts and incredible professors, deans, and college staff.  Not only did we receive great feedback, but we were also able to provide feedback to other teams in the process as well.  This style of presentation, we believe, is incredibly effective and engaging.

Working on this project this semester, our team engaged in numerous learning experiences.  We attempted ideas, failed, regrouped and pushed through to try and deliver a prototype that we hope can be expanded upon in future project courses.  Our team learned the intricacy of managing a project from an initial idea, to prototyping, to redeveloping our project scope and future use.  Our hopes as a team, are that another project group can take the progress we made, and strive even further to automate our flood mapping process.  We believe that if this project was further automated, it would be a useful asset to cities around the world.  This automated technique could also be useful for large construction sites, and could automatically track construction progress in an easy and efficient way.

Our thanks to the wonderful staff who have led this project.  It was an experience we have learned from and value, and will take the lessons learned here into our professional lives.

 

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