Research Counts

By Kayode Atoba

In Fort Hancock, Texas, flood waters cause significant damage each year. Yet residents have little reliable information about where these events might happen, because the town's flood maps are more than 40 years out of date. This reflects a pattern across under-resourced communities in Texas, a state where most counties are considered rural. As these small, sometimes isolated communities are increasingly threatened by complex flood hazards, many lack comprehensive data and modern tools that could help them to prepare and build resilience.

The development of infrastructure and coordinated planning to address flood hazards has received bipartisan support in Texas. To make meaningful progress on flood risk mitigation, however, the state must strengthen flood risk data collection, infrastructure, and accessibility. In response to these pressing needs, the Disaster Resilience Information and Partnership (DRIP) program at Texas A&M University—funded by the Texas Legislature—is building collaborations between researchers, residents, and decision makers to close flood data gaps in under-resourced communities. As demonstrated by DRIP, tackling data gaps in rural communities requires multi-stakeholder collaborations that make hazard risk data more accurate, accessible, and useful for local decision-making.

How Flood Risk Data Makes a Difference

Data about where floods can happen, and the people, property, and critical infrastructure at risk, are fundamental to developing flood resilience. Such comprehensive data provides a foundation to inform risk reduction efforts, make development decisions, and critically, to develop hazard mitigation plans, which are typically required to secure federal disaster aid when floods are catastrophic. Yet many under-resourced communities in rural Texas exist in data deserts, where essential flood risk information is scarce, outdated, or difficult to access and understand. In some parts of the state, these data deserts are compounded by unique geographical hazards like dry creek beds or arroyos, which are traditionally not captured in hydrologic and hydrographic models. Consequently, residents are left exposed to flash floods, and many resort to quick fixes like homemade berms which do little to reduce their flood risk. Even when data are available, many local governments lack the personnel or capacity to put it to use.

Collecting and Creating Data That Reflects Community Needs

Existing models and data resources often fail to capture the lived experiences of people in rural, flood-prone Texas communities. To address this, DRIP’s approach combines technical support with community input to make flood risks visible. When reviewing available flood risk data in Fort Hancock, for example, we found almost no documentation of flood risk for arroyos. Yet residents who’ve witnessed floodwaters washing away their roads and encroaching on their homes know this isn’t accurate. To address this problem, DRIP used high-resolution drone imagery to provide a foundation to better understand and mitigate flood risk. Then, critically, we turned to the community to help them gather their own data. This included door-to-door visits to document lived flood experiences and gather georeferenced photos of past floods.

Community members report they felt heard and empowered by this data co-development. This approach incorporates community needs and expertise as key components of evidence-based decision making on flood infrastructure and policy outcomes. For small communities, which often face competing infrastructure demands and policy priorities with limited resources, this kind of decision support is critical.

DRIP has also worked with communities to customize data tools, as in the case of Wise County, in Northeast Texas. As development there expands, and flood hazard increases, local officials must manage a changing flood landscape while relying on outdated flood risk data and models. Again, even when models are available, they’re not always useful to local planners, emergency managers, or others who might lack the technical expertise needed to interpret their outputs. To address this, DRIP adapted the most current flood models to create high resolution mapping products which visualize the potential impact of 10-, 25-, 50-, 100- and 500-year storms. These maps allow users to extract flood depth and elevation data over specific areas or points of interest within the county, which can assist in decision making, policy development, and scenario planning. A local official in Wise County underscored that this collaborative, community-engaged process helped them to “obtain information that’s actionable,” and that in turn helped them to reduce their hazard risk.

Empowering Communities Through Engagement

Truly inclusive and useful flood risk data and solutions cannot be simply developed and prescribed by researchers. Instead, local communities need to be empowered to define their problems and be experts of their own needs. DRIP provides data enhancement and support through supercomputing, drone technology, and technical training, but our process also prioritizes helping residents and local leaders develop flood data and tools that are contextually-grounded and aligned with community-driven visions for flood resilience.

DRIP offers a model for in-depth engagement and capacity building that can empower long-term resilience across diverse communities. Across Texas, state and university-led initiatives and community partnerships are making progress to bridge data gaps and leverage public support for infrastructure to build a future where every county, regardless of size or capacity, has the tools to protect its next generation.