Jan '14 Meetup Features Watershed Protection Safety and Visualization Projects

Sixteen people participated in Open Austin’s first meetup of the year, this past Monday night at the Terrazas Branch Library. Open Austin plans to host monthly meetups throughought 2014, to discuss open data policy and projects with the general public. At Monday’s meetup, Matt Porcher and Rob Clayton from the City of Austin Watershed Protection Department presented some projects they developed, as well as efforts to share data with the public.

Porcher gave the group an update on ATXFloods.com, a project that was initiated by Code for America fellows during their residency in 2012. The website provides a map that shows low-water crossings that lead to road closures and dangerous conditions because of flood waters. The project has been incorporated as a service maintained by the City of Austin to inform residents of dangerous driving situations. One perhaps unintended use case is local news media, which have used the site to inform their audiences of dangerous conditions. The current president of the Dove Springs Neighborhood Association attended the meetup with keen interest. The Dove Springs neighborhood suffered devastating damage in floods last year. He provided feedback on how the city and emergency services could best provide residents with emergency information.

Clayton demonstrated FloodPro, an online application that maps the city’s flood plains and indicates the water quality of watershed areas around the city. The tools he presented were largely developed for policy and scientific audiences, so he asked the group for feedback on potential uses by the general public and interface considerations for a broad audience. Watershed Protection is one of the most data-intensive departments in the City government. Because of concerns after the 1981 Memorial Day flood, Austin has been a leader in developing flood-related programs and maintaining data about watersheds in the city.

Slides from the presentations are available here:

Open Austin is planning several events a month through 2014, including a monthly meetup and a monthly hack night. The next meetup is scheduled for February 24 at the Terrazas Branch Library. It will feature Thomas Levine, a citizen hacker who has produced a number of data visualization projects based on open government data. Join our email list for latest news and events.