Crowdsourcing detailed flood data.

EGU General Assembly 2015Vienna | Austria | 12 – 17 April 2015

Dr Nicholas Walliman

Oxford Brookes University

• €4.5bn average annual cost EU

• €23bn by 2050

• Profound social costs

Flood prediction, management and defence strategies• Accurate information• Flood Modelling

Automated data gathering

• Least reliable in urban and physically complex geographies

Crowdsourcing data of floods• Improved accuracy

• Identifies the effects of local landscape

App based data acquisition• Combines camera records with GPS data and time.• Automatically produces dataset.• Follow up calls to get more information.

Datasets

Georeferenced, quantitative datasets & questionnaire

Responses in EXCEL file format; qualitative interview

Datasets as Word files; digitized images.

Utilisation of an esablished specialist commercial provider

WildKnowledge (WK) had identified the ‘engagement’ potential of mobile devices before the dawn of the iPhone.

WK’s applications can be used to gather/receive information about ANY topic (wild = unrestricted!)

WK is an Oxford Brookes University spinout company

Data Collection App

Benefits• Detailed information reflected in sophisticated

flood protection models.• Core to framing urban resilience strategies• Optimised effectiveness of investment.

The context for recovery and resilience work is highly complex.

Many different groups with an interest/responsibility for flood management, all with separate reporting mechanisms

Numerous organisations and public agencies will see this as a valuable addition to their data sets.

Stakeholders

This Research• Pioneering approach will develop flood event

data.• Will support systems to advance existing

approaches.• Will support improved flood risk assessment.

Thank you for listening!

Any questions?