Technology tames midwest floods
Millions glued to television sets across the nation watched as record breaking floods on the giant Missouri and Mississippi rivers rampaged through the Midwest. The summer saw heavy, unprecedented storms, pelting unrelenting rainfall on Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, and Missouri. During June and July heavy rains fell 39 out of 54 days. Tributary reservoirs in Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa filled. Tens of thousands of volunteers worked round the clock piling sandbags into makeshift levees. The Missouri and Mississippi, sometimes destroying and washing away everything in their paths, crested at all time highs. The same satellite transmitting technology that let television viewers see storm fronts moving across the Midwest creating the disaster is also responsible for saving untold lives and mitigating flood losses estimated at more than $6 billion in the Missouri River Basin alone. A network of hundreds of automated Satellite Data Collection Platforms (DCPs) interfaced with self-reporting gauges, used to measure such crucial data as rainfall and river levels, to provide fast, reliable realtime weather and flood data.
- OSTI ID:
- 5508327
- Journal Information:
- Public Works; (United States), Vol. 124:12; ISSN 0033-3840
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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