Section One: Flood Analysis
Introduction
In this section, you will determine which areas of campus are more affected by flooding, by creating a raster layer representing accumulated water resulting from a thunderstorm. You will use the analytical 3D scene you created in the previous Lesson to visualize the flooding. In this study, you will use a FEMA flood map to find out how much of campus might be affected by the 1-percent annual chance flood, which is referred to as 100-year flood1. You will buffer the floodways around campus to present the flood plain and calculate the campus area affected by the 100-year flood. The floodway data is downloaded from FEMA flood map service center2. On flood plains, if you consider that water accumulation or the height of the water is a constant value, other factors that affect which areas are more affected by the flood are dependent on various factors. Examples of these factors are land elevation, surface material (pervious or impervious surfaces), vegetation coverage, and surface condition (saturated or dry). In this study, we only consider elevation as a factor. Therefore, you will extrude the flood data to see which buildings or trees are more affected.
For more information, refer to FEMA: Flood Zones