Flood Monitoring and Mitigation Strategies for Flood-Prone Urban Areas; Coastal Virginia Communities and Their Response to Increased Flooding

How can flooding in the United States be mitigated? Climate change has
increased the magnitude and frequency of flooding in both coastal and inland
communities in the U.S. Successful flood mitigation will require both technical and social
innovation. How can flooding events in the City of Charlottesville be mitigated?
Charlottesville needs a modeling and sensing capability to locate flooding sites in realtime. City officials now depend on residents to alert them, a subjective and sometimes
inequitable method. With a list of storm structures ranked by total peak flow, the city can
identify the sites most in need of maintenance, including unreported sites. With sensors
the city can use real-time data to reveal areas needing flooding relief and resources.
How are coastal Virginia communities responding to growing threat of flooding?
Flooding bears immense infrastructural, social, and environmental costs. Government
agencies, elected officials, businesses and advocacies are competing to shape the
responses and how they are funded. Some favor major flood-mitigation projects; others
demand reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to limit the effects of global climate
change.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering
Technical Advisor: Jonathan Goodall
STS Advisor: Peter Norton
Technical Team Members: Pat Finley, Grayson Gatti, Kiri Nicholson, Kruti Shah