Excerpts from National Hydrologic Program Managers Conference, December 3, 2002

What I see about AHPS and my involvement is that the business of hydrology in the National Weather Service has been elevated to a much higher platform. I'm sure glad to see this, but we haven't plateaued yet. What I would like to share is a perspective of how we [state & local partner agencies] view our relationship with the National Weather Service.

Why is there so much national interest in floods? Floods are kind of a big deal and they do impact our economy very heavily. Considering all weather-related disasters, they are a big killer and you all know that. Floods cost our nation between $4-5 billion annually. In some years, floods can cost that much in a week [e.g. Tropical Storm Allison]. Seventy to eighty percent of presidential declared [natural] disasters are flood related.

Now, step back and look at the insurance business that has been created by the United States federal government under FEMA. There is over $600 billion of coverage in the United States today--and it is interesting to note that twenty percent of flood insurance claims occur in areas that have not been identified as flood prone. What this tells me as an engineer is that we have a long way to go in mapping and understanding our hazards. What we do know is that the impact of water on our society does affect our economy in all sorts of ways.

How many have attended an ALERT users conference--about 50% maybe? If you get a chance, take advantage of it. We need to get you all more involved with these users group conferences. Here is what is important about them. You will meet your constituency groups at these user conferences. There are three main user groups in the United States, the ALERT Users Group [AUG] on the West Coast, the Southwestern Association of ALERT Systems [SAAS], and in the East you have the ALERT~FLOWS East Coast Users Group which deals with both the ALERT and IFLOWS technologies.

Put these acronyms aside and what are we talking about? We are talking about local data and local data acquisition directed primarily at hydrologic services. The services that you provide in your day-to-day job depend, not exclusively, but to a high degree on hydrologic data provided by others. You [the National Weather Service] do not pay for a high percentage of this data, but you use it in providing [flood] forecasts and warnings to the nation.

I think a watershed year to note was 1972. I say this because a lot of what is going on in the United States today with locals getting involved in the detection business--actually buying gages, putting systems in, evaluating the data--came out of the Rapid City flash flood. It [ALERT development and implementation] really came out of the Western Region of the National Weather Service. The Western Region Director [in 1972] knew there was dialogue taking place out West about this idea of locals being involved in measuring rainfall, doing some things, and the State of California was involved as well. After the Rapid City flood, he came home [from a Rapid City vacation taken during the flood] with a whole new appreciation that maybe we ought to do this local flood warning thing a little quicker. So, the business of locals contributing to the flood warning process came out of an action following the 1972 Rapid City Flood in the middle part of the United States. Communities in California acted on things very quickly by deploying and implementing what is today called ALERT Systems.

The other thing that happened in 1972 was Hurricane Agnus. So, if you look at Hurricane Agnus out East and the 237 people in middle part of the United States that were killed in the Rapid City flash flood, events like these tend to get Congress' attention. And that's really what happened. It [these events] didn't have much affect on the National Weather Service at that time, but it had a tremendous impact on the National Flood Insurance Program. In 1973, Congress passed the Flood Disaster Protection Act. That was a direct response to Hurricane Agnus and Rapid City. This [1972] was definitely a watershed year in the flood insurance program.

For flash floods our lead times are very short. We need to have more people sensitive to the problems of early warning. We need to have notification before the onset of flooding. We want our emergency managers mobilized or at least at a very high level of awareness before it rains. Local officials are learning early detection triggers and thresholds to monitor. For example, local public safety and public works officials monitor temperatures and dew points hourly to determine if the forecast flood potential will actually occur.

Also, you will never know the flood hazards as well as your local agencies...and you need to be connected with them in partnership in order to be successful.

When you start considering other water resources management decisions covering hydro-power, navigation, water supply, irrigation--it becomes clear how extremely valuable our water resources are and how managers use your forecasts for so many things besides flood decisions. When you are thinking drought-to-flood, AHPS has the potential to more than double its benefit.

What I like to think about when I think about projects like AHPS is the potential for residual benefits. You are going to depend on "others" for a lot of the data that goes into the AHPS product. You are going to have opportunities to get "outside your box" to educate, partner and work closely with the media. We all are going to do it together.

What it really comes down to is that there are not a whole lot Jim Whites [Emergency Manager Harris County, TX] can do to protect individuals from flooding in Harris County. I mean, he can warn them but if those individuals don't make good decisions on their own to protect themselves, Jim has limited capability. He can't go and lift them out of their houses. They [people at risk] have got to have a plan for their own. You've got an opportunity with projects like this [AHPS] and the Internet [as a delivery tool] to encourage self help and empower people to make good safety decisions.

There are many new ways to use the Internet. I don't think the Weather Service has really grabbed on to this thing [Internet] yet. It really has great potential and we haven't seen it fully developed in the area of hydrology, particularly with local data. I'm trying to encourage you guys to think along those terms. Where we are moving to with GIS today gives us the ability to see individual houses. More importantly, the data behind the picture of a floodplain gives us a ton of information.

Think in terms of the product you [National Weather Service] put out, when it comes to watches and warnings particularly. If you could be so specific in a community to identify affected subdivisions--think of the potential of these kinds of GIS applications have down the road. The systems capable of this exist today and many communities already have these in place. With locals bringing this capability to the National Weather Service--this is clearly a partnering effort worth pursuing. I don't think you [the National Weather Service] are going to be able to pay for it [GIS] yourselves. But, if you work with the local governments who are paying for it and have other needs for it, you will have your utility implemented through your partnership with those local officials.

In conclusion, I'd like to leave you with one final user perspective. I take you back to 1993 when the upper Mississippi River basin flooded. Back in 1993, the National Weather Service went to people and asked, "What do you need? We are from the federal government and we are here to help. What can we do to make your job better?" They told them, "We just need the 'stick." They [the local emergency managers] knew they needed data, but the federal government being who they are were much wiser and knew they could do better than that. Now today we have those same emergency managers shown here with a laptop computers and a wireless Internet connection. These guys are all using the Internet now and they are looking at weather products and they are making the same kind of decisions in 2002 that they did in 1993. Now we are starting to learn how to ask a different kind of question. The local guys pretty much knew what they needed. Now the better question to ask these folks is, "What decisions do you make?" Well, they still make the same decisions. They look at the "stick" and know what they have to do. As we continue to grown with our use of technology, let's keep this picture in mind.

If we make a concerted effort to think "outside our box" and ask people like Jim White, "what decisions do you make" we are going to be in a better position to provide a tool to help with that decision, or at least work together to develop a tool that helps us all. Thank you.