This Second Generation Rice University / Texas Medical Center Flood Alert System (FAS2) incorporates the latest in hydrologic technology in order to predict more accurately the overall threat of out-of-bank flooding of Brays Bayou near the Texas Medical Center. The system incorporates the following main features, each of which is available via the navigation bar at the top of this webpage.
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Radar tab: Radar rainfall data showing the instantaneous rainfall rate at various zooms centering around Brays Bayou, updated every 5-7 minutes. A 4 kilometer grid is used for display purposes, with a 1 square kilometer grid used for data analysis. See more details here.
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Rainfall tab: Rainfall data summaries are available in both tabular and bar graph format for quick referencing of rainfall amounts over specific portions of Brays Bayou. See more details here.
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Cameras tab: Bayou Cameras overlook the inlet of Harris Gully into Brays Bayou. See more details here.
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Hydrology tab: Real-time hydrologic model predictions are now available. Three different approaches for flow prediction resulting from recent rainfall are available, including: Real-Time HEC-1/HEC-HMS, Vflo™, and the standard nomograph previously available in the original FAS. See more details here.
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Predictions tab: Short duration precipitation prediction amounts are now available as computed by PreVieux™. This powerful tool provides an estimate of the expected future rainfall over all portions of Brays Bayou and the surrounding areas out to one hour in the future. See the Vieux Associates website for more details.
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Lights : The "traffic lights" in the upper right corner of each page indicate an estimate of the current threat of flooding in Harris Gulley and the Texas Medical Center based on current flow estimates through Brays Bayou at Main Street. Find more details here.
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Alerts : Weather alerts are pulled from the National Weather Service EMWIN system. When an alert is in effect, a summary message will appear below the banner of each page. The summary serves as a link to a page that displays the entire alert bulletin. Find more details here.
FAS2 and the Floodalert program are directed by Dr. Phil Bedient. System managers are Nick Zheng Fang, Ph.D., Research Engineer, and Rik Hovinga, Research Engineer, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
FAS2 was designed by Dr. Bedient, Dr. Jude Benavides, and Anthony Holder.
Dr. Bedient is the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering in the Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University.
Email: bedient@rice.edu
Dr. Benavides is now in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science, at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
Email: jbenavides@utb.edu
Anthony Holder is a Senior Project Manager with J.F. Thompson, Inc.
Email: Anthony.Holder@jfthompson.com
FAS2 employs the following technologies:
J. Cameron Cooper was the computer system architect. Programming support is provided by Jerry Fowler.
