Central Virginia marked the first day of spring with a downpour — and the start of a citizen science project to find what parts of Richmond flood most often.
Sheri Shannon — co-founder of urban greening nonprofit Southside ReLeaf, which is running the Go with the Flow project — said city residents can and do report flooding problems with the city’s 311 service.
“The reality is not everyone's going to utilize 311,” Shannon said. “So, to simplify that process, we're like, let's utilize the power of our neighbors.”
Existing data reviewed by Southside ReLeaf and its partners at the University of Richmond “really wasn't localized for what we were witnessing on the ground in Southside,” according to Shannon.
So, Go with the Flow turned to residents — the people who know where flooding happens in their neighborhoods, on their commutes and in their daily lives — and asked them to become “Flow-Riders.”
That involves filling out a simple survey when it rains. The online form asks for the location of the observation, when the rain happened, whether it flooded and if 311 was called about drainage issues.
UR professor Stephanie Spera said researchers are building a model to help locate flooding hotspots. They previously used data from satellite imagery and other sources to create one, but didn’t have the precision they wanted.
“It's not perfect, which is where we want everyone else to come in and to try and give us data points … so we can make this model more robust,” Spera said.
By taking crowdsourced observations and cross referencing that with other information — tree cover, paved surfaces, slope of the land — the model can predict where else flooding might be a problem in the city.
“So that way, we can create a model that we feel confident in, to be like, ‘Oh, here are the areas that we probably need to invest in as a city, versus over here, we’re OK,’” Spera said.
Participants can sign up for text alerts that are sent when it rains. Spera stressed that they’re looking for observations regardless of whether or not it floods; getting info on where stormwater is managed well is also useful for the model.
Along with managing outreach for the project, Southside ReLeaf will also “ground truth” the model’s work by checking for flooding where it is predicted.
It’s not the first citizen science project to take place in the River City: Previous citizen-run efforts to map the city’s heat-island effect have spurred action by the city government to plant more trees, remove heat-amplifying infrastructure and more.
Spera and Shannon said if the project gets enough responses, they could to take it to city leaders to help determine where infrastructure work is needed.
Southside ReLeaf prioritizes Southside Richmond in its work, due to historic disinvestment and a disproportionate share of poverty, environmental hazards and limited access to food and health care. But the study is taking observations from all over the city.
The project’s goals align with those set by City Council and mayor’s office. The RVAGreen Climate Equity Action Plan 2030 outlines goals to make the city more resilient to flooding, with an emphasis on areas that deal with it most frequently. Data from the project could help the city make those determinations.
Climate change is driving flooding in Richmond. And while Spera said the city still gets about the same amount of rain yearly as in the past, it comes in fast-moving storms that overwhelm the stormwater system.
“What's happening is we're getting dumped on in these intense rainfall events, then we'll have periods of drought, and then [get] dumped on again,” Spera said. “So, it's not great for our infrastructure that was not designed for these storms.”.
The project is taking observations until Sept. 1.
