Workshop: Defining Flood Risk Metrics to Place FloodNet Sensors in New York City

Inland and coastal floods caused by severe weather events have always been a threat for New York City (NYC). Only last year, Hurricane Ida brought massive precipitation to the city, shattering historical records for single-hour rainfall. Hurricane Ida’s precipitation exceeded the stormwater network’s capacity, ultimately flooding streets, subways, and homes, and tragically taking the lives of 13 New Yorkers.

The NYU Disaster Risk Analysis Lab, FloodNet Team, and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice are working together to identify NYC’s areas with the highest flood risk to help NYC place FloodNet sensors. NYC FloodNet is a flood data collection program for real-time street-level flood information to city agencies, residents, emergency response teams, and researchers. The city has already installed 29 FloodNet sensors and will install another 500 in priority areas citywide over the next five years.

This workshop will bring together multiple stakeholders to help the city prioritize the areas for deploying NYC FloodNet sensors. To prioritize these areas, we invite emergency responders, city officers, researchers, and disaster risk specialists to propose, discuss, and assess comprehensive risk metrics with a thorough consideration of equity for our communities. By combining multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, we will create a wider picture of flood impacts on the city, assigning a scale of importance to the different risk and equity metrics. The workshop will also be an opportunity to explore how FloodNet sensors can help support many other uses for flood risk management and mitigation to build a more resilient and equitable NYC.

This workshop is sponsored by the NYU Connected Cities with Smart Transportation (C2SMART) Center.

Workshop Schedule

9:00 – 10:00 Presentations
● Welcome
● Overview of Flood Risk in New York City
● Overview of FloodNet Initiative
● Stormwater Resiliency Plan

10:00 – 10:15 Icebreaker activity
A brief activity for self introduction and familiarization among the participants.

10:15 – 11:45 Brainstorming and moderated discussion on three main topics:
● Quantitative risk assessment for floods in New York City
● Equity and environmental justice
● FloodNet data collection and usage

11:50 – 12:30 Quantitative Exercise: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Individual ranking exercise of available quantitative metrics to assess flood risk in New York City.