The Challenge
Flooding in the lake front communities of Seminole County is a significant hazard for people and property. With its 10−year stormwater master plan, the City of Casselberry wanted to know how its stormwater assets were performing, starting with Gee Creek.
Gee Creek is the primary discharge point for Lake Kathryn,which covers 74 acres. Several upstream lakes also feed into Lake Kathryn. Previously, the City mitigated floods by manually operating a gate in the weir at Gee Creek and determined riskby manually reading staff gauges.
The Results
Casselberry uses Opti’s web-based dashboard and alerts to create a predictive flood-stage monitoring program. This helps the City determine when to lower or raise the weir at Lake Kathryn to reduce the risk of neighborhood flooding. Benefits include shortening emergency response time tooptimizing O&M. Opti key performance indicators include:
- Targeted Asset Maintenance: By continuously monitoring stormwater infrastructure, Opti creates relationships between asset performance indicators like draw down time, and physical conditions such as clogs or leaks.
- Immediate Actionable Insights: By comparing current and forecast conditions, Opti enables the city to prepare in advance of storms.
- Auditable Performance Validation: By using continuous real-time data, Opti helps verify and report on stormwater asset performance, such as discharged volume.
The Solution
The City implemented Opti continuous monitoring and predictive analytics to optimize surveillance of Lake Kathryn elevation in order to protect the surrounding neighborhood from flooding. Weather forecasts and rainfall are used to provide predicted inflow to Lake Kathryn while real-time monitored water level determines discharge based on a range of possible weir configurations at the outlet structure. Geosyntec Consultants provided the design and operational protocols for this project.
