On September 18th, University of South Florida St. Petersburg professor Barnali Dixon appeared before the city’s Council of Neighborhood Associations to introduce CRIS-HAZARD, a new app developed by USF researchers that uses crowdsourced photographs, videos and location details to provide near real-time data on flooding.
Just over a week after that soft launch, the app saw its first real action as Hurricane Helene’s devastating storm surge flooded several coastal and low-lying neighborhoods. Photographs uploaded to the app or captured by 14 stationary cameras placed around the city chronicled flooding in several areas of St. Pete, along with St. Pete Beach and Gulfport. When Milton brought dangerous and destructive inland flooding two weeks later, there were fewer photos, but from a wider area of the region that included Palm Harbor, Citrus Park and the Temple Terrace area.
Now, Dixon, a GIS and remote sensing professor and the executive director of USF’s Initiative on Coastal Adaptation and Resilience, hopes to see more widespread community use of the free app, which USF and Georgia Tech University developed in partnership with $1.5 million in funding from the National Science Foundation. Researchers are using AI technology to process images of flooding uploaded to the app and estimate water levels to validate the accuracy of the prediction models used to determine the vulnerability and flood risks for areas. That can help emergency management and government officials better identify flooding threats and climate vulnerability down to the neighborhood, street or property level.
While powerful hurricanes like Helene and Milton bring historic flooding, Dixon expects the app can be a valuable tool for determining flood risks from more routine heavy rain events like the September 4th storm that flooded streets through St. Pete and other areas of Pinellas. She says with more widespread use, the app could grow into a useful tool for drivers to check where roads are flooded and take another route.
USF researchers plan to install 30 more stationary cameras at locations around Pinellas to chronicle flooding for the app. The researchers would like the app to eventually be used in communities nationwide.
For more information, go to CRIS-HAZARD and USF iCAR
For prior stories, go to With community help, USF developing app to show neighborhood-level flooding, climate risks
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