The Pennsylvania Stormwater Management Act (ACT 167) requires Allegheny County to prepare and adopt Stormwater Management Plans (SMPs) for each watershed located in the County. Sci-Tek assisted the County’s consultant, Michael Baker Jr., Inc. with developing SMPs by observing and documenting the cause or causes of reported flooding within specific watersheds. Sci-Tek provided the following services:
- Obtained and reviewed available information including The SMP Project Website, Allegheny Places – The Allegheny County Comprehensive Plan, FEMA Flood Maps, satellite images, topographic maps, GIS shape files, and Google Earth KMZ files showing stream and flooding area locations.
- Imported available KMZ and shape files into Google Earth to facilitate planning of field activities.
- Set up automotive GPS units with site locations as waypoints to facilitate efficient navigation between sites.
- Reviewed and edited data collection from templates for use on this project.
- Prepared georeferenced satellite photographs and topographic mapping for off-line use on Android tablet PCs. These figures functioned as moving maps in the field that showed the observer’s location relative to the features on the maps.
- Prepared a relational database and implemented it on Android tablet PCs for use in the field for electronic data collection. This database allowed site sequence planning, direct, field entry of descriptions of observations, the management of associated digital photographs of observations and field sketches taken with the tablet PC’s internal camera, and the creation of color photo location plans on satellite images of the vicinity of observations at any convenient scale. The database also allowed the geotagging of photographs and observations and captured Sci-Tek’s miscellaneous comments, conclusions and recommendations about flooding.
- Visited stream reaches associated with 21 flood problem sites.
- Documented the watershed and stream conditions that contribute to flooding, including bridges, culverts and other flow restrictions, flood improvements and detention facilities, and existing and potential flood damage with type-written notes, geotagged photographs, measurements, color photo location plans, and hand-drawn sketches. All of this was entered directly into the relational database in the field, and each observation and photograph was time and date stamped.
- Downloaded the data obtained from the relational database and used it to populate spreadsheets for use by Baker and the County. In addition to the spreadsheets, our electronic deliverables included all photographs, photo location plans, and sketches prepared in the field.
