Interagency deployment of a shared low-cost flood monitoring system to improve flood resilience across Southeast Texas: A case study

In 2021, eight counties in Southeast Texas formed a non-tax authority flood control partnership to provide a forum for communication, create a regional database and improve flood modeling, early warning, and flood mitigation decisions. This partnership is able to successfully deploy and manage an early warning flood system network at relatively low-cost by: (i) assigning the university as technical expert and general network administrator so that no additional agency workforce is required to operate and maintain the system, (ii) the flood monitoring system is a simple system and (iii) the data was able to be displayed in real-time using an existing web-based dashboard owned and operated by another agency within the partnership. The low-cost sensors are lightweight and easily mountable which allowed them to be rapidly deployed within a short period of time (73 sensor sites installed within 7-month window) over a 6000 square mile area. The data is shared with the public, and local, state, and federal agencies to monitor drainage infrastructure, and provide the community with flash flood and roadway closure alerts.