ASU engineers working on warning system for urban flooding

PHOENIX (FOX 10) - It's a scene that many Valley residents know all too well - flooded roads and freeways during the Monsoon. Now, a team of Arizona State University engineers is working to warn drivers before and during the flooding.

The project is called Flood Aware and it aims to provide information on current flooding and flooding in the near future.

"We have good information about the weather forecast, but we don't have great information exactly about where the flood risks are in the urban environment," said Margaret Garcia, assistant professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. "We have a lot of people moving around and flooding could an inconvenience but it can also be a safety issue. So we want to be able to know where [the flooding] is now and anticipate where it is flooding soon so we can help emergency responders get ahead of things."

By doing so, Garcia says ASU is using camera and image technologies like traffic cameras to test things out.

"It's literally looking at the street curb and the catch basin, and then we process those images to tell how much water s on the surface," Garcia said. "If it's dry, nothing. If it's wet or if there's a buildup of water and if it is, how deep."

With the use of traffic cameras and the assistance from the public, they're able to better estimate the depth of water in certain areas.

"Lots of people have cell phones they can take a photo [with] and send a text message," Garcia said. "We've got a lot of cameras that are already in our urban environment that if we understand how to utilize them, we can serve this extra purpose without installing another layer of costly sensors that cities and the state would have to maintain."

This is just the beginning of a three-year project. These engineers are looking to learn from this Monsoon season so they can make adjustments in the next couple of years.