Another important element in preparing for emergencies is the investigation of methods to mitigate the impacts caused by natural disasters. In coastal South Texas, many of the Flood Insurance Rate Maps prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are outdated and subject to error. One means to identify the erroneous information contained in FEMA's flood hazard maps is to create visualizations of the Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH) models prepared by the National Weather Service for basins along the Texas Gulf Coast. The new, high-resolution digital elevation model produced by the U.S. Geological Survey and TNRIS-StratMap team can be used to create much more detailed maps of areas under threat of inundation by a storm surge. In the region surrounding Corpus Christi Bay, the areas near Ingleside and Aransas Pass, Texas, have been identified as flood-prone using the new visualization. An airborne LIDAR system designed for high-resolution elevation collection operated by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology in collaboration with the UT-Center for Space Research recently collected data in the vulnerable area near Ingleside for the production of even more accurate elevation datasets to be used in new flood models. One means to identify the erroneous information contained in FEMA's flood hazard maps is to create visualizations of the Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH) models prepared by the National Weather Service for basins along the Texas Gulf Coast.
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