Interesting Flood "Mashup" for Global Warming/Ice Melt

In an attempt to figure out how we could better visualize oncoming floods, I am pursuing the task of figuring out if there would be some way to do a Flood Mashup.

There are some limited applications on the Internet that address sea level change and how it would affect the coastal regions.

To get an idea of what a Mashup is on the net, goto this link:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)

I think of Mashups on the internet as just a way to take information or data sources on the internet and put them together (i.e. mash up) to represent things in another way. If you are familiar with Google Earth, this is a huge mashup of data from millions and millions of sources.

I would like to attempt to figure out a way to view flood levels in a dynamic (dynamic in the way of changing altitude and river flood level over an area) river valley setting.

To present this in as close to a possible real time dimension in a graphic way. Now, this would be nearly impossible to do with extreme accuracy because you will never know when a log or ice jam or some other impediment would be working against you, in a certain area, but it could help in a general way to keep people vigilant during flooding events along a river area.

Any data sources for rain information would be appreciated. ie. Weather Service, Weather Bug, NOAA, Ohio Department of Transportation. If you have the link to where the weather data could be sourced automatically, please put it in the comment area.

It would be best to be a graphic output to make it easier to discern the data.

I am working on finding programmers and real time data streams to make an alpha model of this idea. Below is what I would like to have the representation look like, but of course this does not work with the inland river models.

If you are interested in working on this project. Contact me through the the OttawaFlood.com website contact page.

Also, if you have any knowledge of sources of realtime river gauge data, please post a link on the comments page. An RSS feed would probably be best.

I would like to work on the Blanchard/Maumee River Valley first. If you look at the post below, you will see it is the Green shaded area with the star in it, I believe the star is the location of Findlay, Ohio, which is upstream of Ottawa on the Blanchard River. It drains from the East to West into the Auglaize River Basin starting to move SW to NE and then into the Lower Maumee river basin eventually flowing into the Western Basin of Lake Erie.

If Findlay, Ohio has flooding, Ottawa will likely flood 12-30 hours later as the mass of water moves downstream.

The other idea is that there are multiple weather sources of information for rain data, that do not share the data. Possibly a Mashup of sorts could work to integrate the different data sources. If nothing else, a constantly updated map of 24 hour rain accumulations. This could be done relatively simply. Again, if you have the source code or data source for any online link to online accumulations, that would be great.

At the very, very bottom of this web page is a widget (widget - is a chunk of computer code embedded into a webpage that allows other websites or applications to work within the present website) that works for the Sea Level Change. Take a look at it, I don't think we have to worry too much about Lake Erie inundating us , unless all of Buffalo Slides into the Eastern End of Lake Erie and creates a massive Tsunami. I don't see that happening.

Also, at the bottom of the page, there is a Mashup Widget from Qrowd.com that takes textual data from the USGS on earthquakes in the world, and maps them graphically and allows you to see the scale of the earthquake. Pretty impressive what you can do to intake, manipulate and output on the internet, automatically.

Steve Teffenhardt