The Risks of Hazard

Flood modeling is entirely dependent upon elevation measurements, and a hidden but crucial aspect of any elevation measurement is the datum on which it’s based. The datum defines the height of "zero." Once again I've asked my colleague at Intermap, Mike Wollersheim, to contribute his knowledge to the blog. When it comes to explaining what’s up with datums, he’s definitely up to the task.

If I told you that your city has an elevation of 3,400 feet, most people assume that I am referring to the height above mean sea level. What else are you going to measure your heights from? It seems obvious unless you really think about it. Then you start to ask questions like:

“If I am in the mountains 500 miles from the coast, how did anyone ever figure out what mean sea level is right here?” 

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the key ingredients for a dependable flood model is elevation data. But with a wide range of elevation data available, how do you select the dataset that will help you build the right flood model for the task at hand — and do so in an efficient, cost effective way? This blog post takes a look at that question for national flood model initiatives.

Today we decided to unlock the Intermap blog vault to revisit a a past post written by a former employee, Ryan Hamilton. His thoughts on pipeline safety and the relationship to terrain data were written a little more than a year ago, but are more relevant than ever as we roll out our new product targeted to this very industry — InsitePro for Pipelines™.