Hacking on flooding related data, Thursday October 18th

[Kevin Rose]

Hey folks,

I recently moved to Madison from Chicago. I was heavily involved in ChiHackNight down there and was happy to see a similar group existed up here in Madison.

Given the recent happenings, I wanted to try and build something flood related. To that end, I will be going to Colectivo on the Square (25 S Pinckney St, Madison, WI 53703) on Thursday October 18th starting around 5:30pm.

My initial idea is to use the data in https://lwrd.countyofdane.com/chartlakelevels/Tabular to try and create an "Are the lakes above their required maximum water level?"-style website. My inspiration comes from a vintage ChiHackNight project http://istheresewageinthechicagoriver.com/ which has a simple hook but some nice "would you like to know more" context further on. I'm not bound to this idea, if a better idea comes along I'll switch to that. I did scrape the city's flood maps in super high resolution but I'm not sure there's much to do with that.

Again, I'll be at Colectivo on the Square (25 S Pinckney St, Madison, WI 53703) on Thursday October 18th starting around 5:30pm. I'll be using a black laptop with a sticker of the Chicago flag (shown below, except my version has the python logo replacing the stars).

Hope to see some folks there!

-Kevin

[Kevin Rose]

Reminder for those who were thinking of attending that this will be tomorrow, October 18th.

I've got the skeleton of a repo at: https://github.com/kbrose/madison-lake-levels

I'm thinking of switching over the source of scraped data from https://lwrd.countyofdane.com/chartlakelevels/Tabular to USGS directly (https://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/IV-Service.html).

[Davi P]

Hello Kevin --

I think a graph is the best way to look at lake levels. Various plots are available.

This will plot this season's levels for Lakes Mendota and Monona.

https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/wi/nwis/uv/?format=gif_stats&period=&begin_date=2018-01-17&end_date=2018-10-17&cb_00065=on&site_no=05428000%2C05429000

Current week plots:

http://infosyahara.org/05428000_mendota

http://infosyahara.org/05429000_monona

National Weather Service current week plot and historic info:

https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/river.php?wfo=mkx&wfoid=18793&riverid=203756&pt%5B%5D=153346&pt%5B%5D=153347&allpoints=151575%2C153346%2C153347%2C153345%2C141536&data%5B%5D=hydrograph&data%5B%5D=crests

Each of those has some good features, and some problems. We could make a better plot with interactive zoom, using D3.js -- for an example, see:

Multiple Line Climate Plot with Zoom - bl.ocks.org

Lake levels in Madison are a complex and political issue. The conventional wisdom is that Dane County was doing a pretty good job of balancing competing interests. Of course that is under intense scrutiny after the recent flooding.

Persistent high lake levels set stage for big flood | Politics and Elections | madison.com

Madison, Dane County leaders renew discussion of lowering lake levels | Politics and Elections | madison.com

Board eyes future flood management, deals with high lake levels | News | hngnews.com

How lake levels are managed:

Lake Water Levels - Clean Lakes Alliance

https://lwrd.countyofdane.com/Lake-Levels

--Davi Post

  DaviWorks.com

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[Greg Tracy]

Welcome to Madison, Kevin!

I won't be able to join you today but I'm really excited to see it happening. Thank you.

If there's interest, I'd love to grab coffee or beer some time and talk more about civic hacking and Propeller.

Cheers.

Greg

ps don't let davi distract you. ;)

On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 10:32 AM Kevin Rose <ke...@maypark.com> wrote:

--

[Kevin Curry]

Watching with interest from Code for Hampton Roads.

Y'all might be interested in this Alexa skill for reading NOAA+USGS tide sensors:

https://github.com/Code4HR/Alexa_NavO

Have fun!

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Kevin Curry

Code for Hampton Roads

http://code4hr.org

http://codeforamerica.org/brigade

[Kevin Rose]

Hey everyone,

I'm in the back-right when you walk in. My brilliant plan of the Chicago flag sticker is thwarted since my laptop is mainly facing a wall. I'm wearing a striped green/blue shirt and wearing glasses. I'm planning on being around until at least 8:30.

-Kevin