To help respond to the declared Natural Disaster in Richland County, the county GIS team has worked with numerous partners to provide recovery and assessment support. As part of that effort, several geospatial tools have been developed and are available (below) for use by local authorities for coordination efforts and to the public for information. We thank our corporate friends at Woolpert and Google for their support.
Flood Inundation Tool
From their Dayton, Ohio headquarters, Woolpert, Inc. flew 1 foot aerial imagery the afternoon of Tuesday, October 6, 2015 to assist in delineating the geographic extent of the flooding. The imagery was collected over much of the City of Columbia and Forest Acres areas. Woolpert then created a ‘Before/After’ web application to compared imagery and assess damage. Richland County GIS provided imagery resources with assistance from Google.
RC GEO Flood Data Viewer
The Richland County GIS team assembled an online assessment tool to assist County departments in their efforts to record and analyze flooding impact. The application is built on open source technology and includes imagery from the County’s Google contract and from flood imagery collected by Woolpert. This tool will be an evolving application as the weeks of recovery and assessment progress.
Road and Dam Status Viewer
To assist County staff, public safety personnel, and citizens, Richland County GIS is attempting to coordinate the status of road closures/failures and dam stability. With this objective in mind, we have published a publicly available map that is being updated by field personnel from various departments. If you have information of your local area that is more accurate or up-to-date than this map, please email a photo of the damage, with the street name and any landmark description to: RCGEOFlood@rcgov.us
NOTE - The Road and Dam Status Viewer is no longer available for use; Google has discontinued the use of this technology. Please see the RC GEO Flood Viewer to view our most recent information.