JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville leaders have a new tool that can identify what areas flood most in Jacksonville and what solutions are needed to improve drainage.
The city’s new compound flood analysis will uncover what other areas of the city could benefit from drainage improvement work similar to the LaSalle Street Drainage Project. The pump station is complete but new pipes and inlets are still being put in. The project is expected to be completed in early 2025.
On Monday, sandbags and tarps linedthe streets of San Marco as businesses prepared for the upcoming rain. Owners at Flame Broiler are still dealing with issues after heaving rain last week left streets flooded.
“We always make sure that everything is kept up and off of the ground. We lift our chairs up, but our electrical outlets we do worry about, because the water can ruin the electrical outlets which is what we’re worried about right now. We do have some shortages," Laura Hedgecock, the owner, said.
The question on many minds: what is the city doing to improve drainage?
For that answer we turn to the city’s chief resilience officer, Anna Goglianese, who is working on compound flooding analysis.
“The city has taken on a really big compound flooding model effort, so that we can better understand where this is happened today, where it’s going to be exacerbated in the future and how we can put in place solutions that will help keep the city resilient," she said.
The tool looks at what areas are most at risk for flooding and how flood drivers like heavy rainfall, rising sea levels or increased coastal flooding could make it worse.
“We’ll not only be able to say what are all possible combinations of flooding but what are the most probable, what are the most likely that we’ll see and that can hep us tailer our infrastructure investments and our solutions to the right places on the ground," Coglianese said.
Officials say next year, they’ll be able to run flood scenarios through the system and craft solutions based on the model outcomes.