Following the devastating floods in 2008 deemed as “Iowa’s Katrina,” state legislators created the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) in 2009 based at the University of Iowa. IFC is the nation’s only academic research center devoted solely to flooding that puts science-based information in the hands of Iowa’s decision-makers, lawmakers, state and federal agencies, emergency responders, and the public.
The IFC has transformed flood resilience in Iowa focused on advancing flood monitoring and prediction, flood inundation mapping, flood mitigation, and education and outreach. The center communicates reliable, real-time flood information through its popular publicly accessible Iowa Flood Information System online web application.
The IFC has helped bring more than $100M in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the state of Iowa to advance watershed-based flood management efforts. The presentation will introduce some of IFC’s major initiatives and activities that have the potential to be replicated to support flood resilience efforts across the country.
