Project: 100-Year Floods: Can a GIS geodatabase be a valuable tool to support the analysis of determining the cost of a 100-year flood?
Student Researcher: Holly Bull
Introduction
“Geographic approach used for location-based analysis and decision making. This parallels the scientific method and includes a research-focused, iterative process for examining diverse datasets and uncovering potential solutions. For GIS professional this use this to begin their projects with a structured methodology. For those new to GIS technology, the five steps of ask, acquire, explore, analyze, and act, are used to defined this proven approach.”
Background
“The concept of a ‘100 year flood’ has been a recurring thing in recent years. These floods are usually caused by rising water levels, especially with large amounts of precipitation. These floods cause damage to many properties and homes every year. By looking at the buildings in the floodplains across York County with the hope to determine the cost of flooding.”
Purpose/Study Area
“The purpose of this project was for the students to learn and use the geoinquriy methods. The hypothesis is that GIS technology is an appropriate tool to be used when creating civil plans, specifically floodplain management plans. As most of the towns and cities in York County are located close to the rivers, wetlands, and other various features there can be a high risk of flooding these areas. Due to the amount of homes in these high flood zones, an assessment of cost of damage during a 100 year flood should be conducted yearly.
The study area will consist of the entity of York County in Pennsylvania. This county borders Maryland on the southern side.”
Conclusions
“Key takeaways from this project:
1. In general this project helped with learning aspects of ARCGIS and ARCGIS map making.
2. The defaults I had with this project would be all of the technical issues with the computer.