About

The Smart Sea Level Sensors Project aims to install a network of 50-100 internet-enabled water level sensors across flood-vulnerable Chatham County, via a working partnership between officials from the Chatham Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) and the City of Savannah, together with a diverse team of scientists and engineers from Georgia Tech.

The sensor network will stretch from Interstate 95 to Tybee Island, capturing a wide range of tributary sizes, orientation, and building densities. The data collection will be complemented by a suite of modeling tools to inform flood risk and vulnerability, including a high-resolution coastal ocean model as well as an integrated hydrological model to capture surface runoff during high precipitation events. Taken together, the framework enables the assessment of short-and long-term coastal flooding risk and vulnerability that are required to inform planning for flood mitigation strategies.

This is the first project of its kind in the region, and our goal is to provide a template for expansions of this technology and community stakeholder framework to other areas of vulnerable coastline along the southeastern US.

Project Partners

Georgia Tech

Kim M. Cobb

Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Russell Clark

Research Faculty, Computer Science

Emanuele Di Lorenzo

Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

David Frost

Professor, Civil & Environmental Eng.

Tim Cone

Program director, CEISMC

Jayma Koval

Research faculty, CEISMC

Chatham Emergency Management Agency

Randall Mathews

Planner

City of Savannah

Nick Deffley

Director, Office of Sustainability

Funders

The Smart Sea Level Sensors project is supported by the following organizations.

Georgia Smart Communities Challenge logo

The Smart Sea Level Sensors Project is one of four projects under the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge. The strategies developed by the selected communities are meant to serve as models that could be implemented elsewhere to advance smart technology and improve community well-being across Georgia.