糖心视频

The catastrophic floods that hit the Texas Hill Country in July left residents and officials scrambling for answers. In response, the Hydrology & Hydroinformatics Innovation (H2I) Lab at The University of Texas at Arlington, led by civil engineering assistant professor Adnan Rajib, developed real-time, time-stamped flood maps showing how quickly the Guadalupe River rose. The visual data, later featured by CBS News Texas, helped residents and local and state officials better understand how the disaster unfolded.

But Rajib says that's just the beginning.

"Too often after major flood disasters, the public conversation stops at sirens and dashboards," Dr. Rajib said, referring to flood warning systems, which the area lacked. "True community resilience requires field-ready maps of floodplain alterations to guide recovery and rebuilding long after the cameras are gone."

Rajib is the lead author of a new cover story in Cell Reports Sustainability that highlights how science and government can work together to better track human-made changes to natural floodplains. These changes, like increasing development within floodplains, make flooding worse.

The article, titled, "Barriers to quantifying human alterations of global floodplains and how we can overcome them," argues that without standardized ways to measure these changes, communities risk falling short in recovery and preparation efforts.

The study identifies four major challenges:

• Different definitions of what counts as floodplain changes
• Inconsistent maps showing floodplain boundaries
• Limited use of key indicators that predict changes
• Data that doesn't line up in scale or resolution, making comparisons difficult

It also offers practical fixes, calling for a shared set of metrics that would allow agencies to compare projects fairly, revise ordinances, and restore wetlands or habitats with confidence.

This latest work builds on Rajib's 2023 study published in Scientific Data, which produced the first global estimate of floodplain loss: nearly 150 million acres of natural floodplains converted to agriculture and development between 1992 and 2019.

Together, Rajib said, real-time flood mapping and standardized floodplain change data will help communities relocate homeowners from flood-prone areas, invest in green infrastructure to manage stormwater and reduce flood risk and strengthen resilience against the next major storm.

"Rapid maps and warnings help in the first 24 hours," Rajib said. "But a structured dataset capturing how humans have been changing natural floodplains helps forever. Texas鈥攁nd flood-prone communities everywhere鈥攏eed both."