Miami Herald
What will Miami look like with more sea rise? This high-tech car helps us picture it
Alex Harris – March 8, 2023
Hurricane Ian’s destructive storm surge last fall shocked many Floridians, even some who’d weathered severe hurricanes before. In some places, the waters were so high that survivors had to scramble to the second story or their roof for safety.
Experts say it’s tough for people to visualize what those record-breaking levels of surge would look like until they arrive.
But FloodVision, a new tool from nonprofit climate advocacy group Climate Central, could change that, with help from a high-tech car they’ve nicknamed the “flood rover.”
The vehicle isn’t anything special (it’s actually a rental), but the cameras and sensors strapped onto it are. They form a mobile scanning system that acts a lot like a souped-up Google Maps car, except the finished product is a simulation of a future flooded street.
Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist of Climate Central, calls it a “visual, visceral, powerful” way to explain the risks of hurricanes — and rising seas — to communities most at risk.
“We know the images are more powerful than any map we can make, or any graphic we can show you,” he said.
Strauss’ team has already done some scanning in Miami, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, and they debuted the car and the new system at the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami Beach this week.
In one example in Miami, researchers at Climate Central captured a picture of a neighborhood with the car cameras, then superimposed the two or so feet of sea rise the region is projected to see by 2070 under NOAA’s intermediate high standard.
The result: enough water to come halfway up a tree and soak through the doors of parked cars. It’s a familiar sight to residents of flood-prone neighborhoods like Brickell, which can reach the same levels of flooding after an intense rainstorm.
Strauss plans to use the technology to simulate images of what sea rise or intense storm surge could look like to educate communities about the risks they face from climate change. One potential hurdle is that the technology does not account for protections that local governments may have already installed, like elevated roads or higher sea walls and stronger stormwater pumps.
Without that, the picture of what could likely happen is skewed in places like Miami Beach, which has spent millions installing new protections against rising seas. But despite the growing body of scientific evidence showing the need for coastal cities to adapt to sea level rise, the execution of these projects has been controversial in the places that need them most.
Strauss hopes that his team’s work can be used to help cut through the noise and visually show residents the benefit of investing in flood protection.
“It’s expensive to build flood protections, and it’s also disruptive,” he said. “This technology can be used, essentially, to show what you’re preventing.”
Miami Beach’s latest road-raising squabble: Who gets swamped by the flood waters?