A partnership to protect critical infrastructure (Audio-Described)

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Detailed Description

This video is an introduction to the partnership between the USGS Arizona Water Science Center and the Arizona Department of Transportation, or ADOT, as it is referred to throughout the video. These two agencies are working together, using cutting edge technology and methods, to understand how flood flows interact with and impact critical infrastructure. These data will help engineers design bridges and roadways that can better withstand high flows and flash floods, a common and potentially dangerous occurrence in the desert southwest. 


Date Taken:

Length: 00:05:11

Location Taken: AZ, US


- [Narrator] The USGS letters and slogan, Science for a Changing World, appear in green in a flipping motion and then fade to black. In cooperation with the Arizona Department of Transportation, Environmental Planning. This video is an introduction to the partnership between the USGS Arizona Water Science Center and the Arizona Department of Transportation, or ADOT, as it is refereed to throughout this video. It is presented by Brandon Forbes, a USGS hydrologist, and Steven Olmsted, the project manager for the ADOT Environmental Planning Branch. Speaking directly to the camera, both Brandon and Steven discuss the goals of the partnership and describe the technologies being used. Throughout the video, the footage cuts to those technologies and methods being used in the field. Hydrologists can be seen setting up a GPS total station, downloading data from pressure sensors, climbing up a ladder to reach a gaging station in a dry riverbed, walking upstream in a river that is flowing under a bridge, discussing plans in a dry riverbed underneath the bridge, assembling and flying an unmanned aerial vehicle from a dry river channel, standing on a bridge taking a velocity reading from a bridge crane, and that weight and sensor being lowered from the crane into the water, installing the pressure sensor into its steel housing, taking GPS measurements with a total station, and operating a LIDAR scanner over a dry river reach. Additionally, there are aerial shots of water flowing under bridges with lush green trees and shrubs on the banks, an aerial shot of a blurred-out intersection with cars driving by and the words ADOT, Connecting Arizona, Everyone, Every Day, Everywhere, appearing on the screen. 3D maps that display potential risk areas within rivers that interact with bridges and roadways, endpoint clouds of elevation data that recreate the channels of streams within a digital setting enabling hydrologists to recreate flows on their computers are all featured in this video.

- The USGS's specialty is data collection, and at the Arizona Water Science Center, we collect lot of hydrologic data. Our stream gages have monitored decades of flow from hundreds of locations from around our state providing us with the data necessary to analyze flood risk and tendencies. But while these data provide us with clear information about our rivers, questions still remain concerning how floods interact with infrastructure and how development and land-use change can alter flood dynamics. This is why it is exciting to have partnered with the Arizona Department of Transportation. It will allow us to target data collection around our state's critical infrastructure and provide a better understanding of how our floods interact with our roadways. These data will then be available to decision-makers who can apply it to solve real-world problems.

- Our mission at ADOT is to keep the people and the economy of Arizona traveling in the most efficient and effective manner. We need to be certain that our infrastructure can withstand the effects from flooding and erosion. To ensure that we are collecting the best data possible to understand how water behaves at specific locations of critical infrastructure, we have partnered with the USGS Arizona Water Science Center. With their expertise in water science and hydrology, ADOT can now use this data to maintain and construct safer and more reliable bridges and roadways.

- [Brandon] The science of measuring and modeling floods has seen monumental advances in the past decade. Where we used to need to have personnel on location to collect data during flood events, we now have the capabilities to measure discharge remotely. Remote sensors and reach scale monitoring techniques allow us to continuously record water flow at our sites. Additionally, LIDAR, or light detection and ranging, coupled with topographic surveys collected via UAS provide minute details of the terrain to allow us to study simulated flows at our gages within computer models. We can vary the discharge of these simulations to match multiple flow events, providing us a unique insight into potential situations at each one of our gages.

- By using USGS data, we will be able to better understand how water will interact with our infrastructure, allowing us to optimize engineering design and formalize a wider range of risk. This partnership will not only contribute to overall knowledge of hydrologic and infrastructure interactions in a desert environment but also provide critical data necessary to efficiently manage infrastructure and ensure public safety.

- We are using all of these tools and more working with the Arizona Department of Transportation to provide the data for scientific solutions to Arizona's transportation challenges. The letters USGS and words science for a changing world appear in green.