Greater Baton Rouge Business Report
For most people who live in Baton Rouge—or north of Interstate 10—Louisiana’s myriad of environmental issues continue to be some distant, “that’s a coastal” problem. True, two years ago a once-in-a-millennial storm swamped much of the Capital Region, but even that’s been largely dismissed as something that surely won’t happen again—at least not in anyone’s current lifetime.
Yet the problems facing the state—and not just along the coast—are very real, experts say, and in many ways are worsening. It’s this growing concern for low-lying areas, stretching from the coast to New Orleans and across the Bayou Region, that prompted the Baton Rouge-based Water Institute of the Gulf to partner with Deltares, a world-renown Dutch applied research institute, in search of better ways to predict future flooding.
The Water Institute of the Gulf, launched shortly after Hurricane Katrina, is a nascent organization compared to Deltares, which has been operating for more than 50 years and is known as a global leader in water management research. The two organizations have shared information in the past, but officially partnered last summer to mitigate flooding impacts by focusing on developing software and levees, modeling watersheds, and infrastructure and nature-based solutions.
They’re also researching coast and deltaic dynamics and forecasting. In Calcasieu Parish, the two organizations have been working on a $50,000 modeling project to identify ways to better manage watersheds in that parish. There’s also work on developing real-time forecasting for the area.
It’s a challenge that anyone who suffered through the August 2016 flood can identify with, says Water Institute President and CEO Justin Ehrenwerth, given one of the greatest challenges of the event was was not having enough information to predict what areas might flood.
Full article here.