This research addresses a critical need to better predict the timing and magnitude of flooding in order to enable state departments of transportation (DOTs) to issue advanced early-warnings, reducing transportation-related deaths and expensive damage to critical assets. During Phases I – III of the FloodCast project, the research team discovered that most DOTs are currently leveraging available data and technology to support flood event decision-making. While these systems exhibit varying levels of sophistication, even the DOTs with the most advanced systems expressed the need for more efficient prediction of expected timing, magnitude, and location of flooding, as well as anticipated impacts on infrastructure, particularly for locations without monitoring gauges. Experimental products and emerging areas of research present promising opportunities for developing high quality hydrometeorological projections and flood forecasts, yet there is an overarching need for structures and guidance to inform how such data can be leveraged in a useful way to enhance DOT flood-event decision making.

FloodCast aims to strengthen state DOT flood response capabilities through the integration of real-time actionable flood forecast information into transportation asset management and emergency operations. A substantial enhancement to the existing DOT planning and response toolkit can be achieved by incorporating dynamic inundation mapping that allows for the rapid translation of stream flow predictions of anticipated events to flood elevation, inundation extent and flood depth products along the hydrologic network. FloodCast attempts to achieve this through coordinating with relevant stakeholders, setting standards for data management, developing methods for flood forecasting processes, delivering incident projection information to DOTs, and providing guidance for the application of outputs in various use cases.A successful FloodCast system will serve to protect human health and safety in the event of extreme weather conditions, while also informing and enhancing longer-term maintenance, planning, and investment decisions.