Wayne County Life

Newark, N.Y.; June 6, 2019.  New York Sea Grant, with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has developed new interactive inundation mapping tools to help property owners along Lake Ontario and its embayments enhance flooding preparedness. The tools are posted at 

https://seagrant.sunysb.edu/articles/r/12972 with a tutorial to assist users. A free, 45-minute training webinar is scheduled for June 20th at 1 p.m.; register at https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/250965bd69e1e22e7c24e00bf0acd2b8.

The online mapping tools provide users with a parcel-level view of areas that could experience flooding along Lake Ontario and its embayments based on predetermined water levels and digital elevation data. Wayne and Monroe County stakeholders beta-tested the new tools. The future scenarios used in the mapping tools are not water levels currently projected, but potential lake levels offered for planning purposes only.

"These new mapping tools will allow users to visualize inundation information for individual parcels of interest using the predetermined water levels. That information can be used by individual property owners as well as communities to enhance flood preparedness and planning going forward," said project leader and New York Sea Grant Coastal Community Development Specialist Mary Austerman, Newark, N.Y.

Use of the mapping tools has been designed to assist planning, e.g., location and triage of accessory structures and belongings during high water, to inform community-level preparedness planning, and to help identify areas that warrant in-depth analyses, enhanced flood response, or policy development to enhance flood resilience.

Austerman and Jessica Kuonen, a Coastal Community Development Assistant with New York Sea Grant, are the developers of the Lake Ontario Inundation Map Package and Lake Ontario Inundation WebMap tools. These new mapping tools were developed as part of a larger project creating a Coastal Resiliency Index, due out later this year. A similar mapping tool for Lake Erie is being explored. For more information, contact Mary Austerman, New York Sea Grant, 315-331-8415 x121, mp357@cornell.edu.

For additional information on New York Sea Grant's Great Lakes Coastal Communities extension efforts, visit www.nyseagrant.org/ccd. To learn more about New York Sea Grant Extension as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York, visit www.nyseagrant.org.