Stakeholder Driven Sensor Deployments to Characterize Nuisance Flood Inundation and Duration in Key West Florida
We test a novel deployment technique using inexpensive accelerometers to measure local floods in Key West, FL, USA using storm drains to deploy HOBO pendant G data loggers. The feasibility of the method is tested by a team of local stakeholders and researchers through four deployments between July 2019 - November 2021. All deployments resulted in 22 sensors successfully recording data, with 15 of these sensors recording flooding.

Description of the Data and file structure

The sum acceleration and the tilt in all three dimensions were downloaded through HOBOware v3.7.21, exported as .csv files and uploaded to RStudio v1.4.1717 for processing. Times at which a sensor recorded a flooding event were identified using tilt in the x-direction and z-direction. A .csv file is created for each logger during each deployment, resulting in 27 accelerometer data files.

The Accelerometer data files are labeled as [sensor ID]_[deployment].csv

NOTE: There are two Accelerometer data files that were deployed differently from the rest, and therefore not included in the final report. The two files are included in this database as 'Garrison_Blight_20197221_NOTSTUDIED' and 'Key_West_Blight_20498054_NOTSTUDIED'. The location of the deployment and the accelerometer IDs are included in the data file name.

The R code to read and analyze the Accelerometer data files is called "WL_Data.R"

Several supplemental data files were created to use within R analysis and plotting:

1) FloodingEvents.csv is the number of times and total minutes inundated each location floods for each deployment. The .csv also includes the minor, moderate, and major flood events denoted by the NOAA Key West Water Level station. These numbers were calculated within R (under section ##### Time inundated #####) and manually entered into the .csv file. A flooding per minute deployed was calculated to compare flooding events across the various deployment times. Empty cells within the table are instances where sensors were either not deployed at a location or not recovered from the location.

2) DeploymentLocations.csv is the 14 locations of accelerometer deployments. Deployment locations were mapped in ArcGIS Pro 2.4.0 using the latitude and longitude collected during deployments. The distance to the closest NOAA tidal station, the distance to the closest coastline or canal, and the elevation were determined for each deployment location The elevation of each deployment location was collected from a digital elevation model from NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center, which provided elevation with a resolution of one-third arc-second (10 m) with reference to the vertical tidal datum of Mean High Water (MHW) and horizontal datum of World Geodetic Systems 1984 (National Geophysical Data Center, 2019).

3) Location_HighTideTiming.csv has the difference between a NOAA high tide and the onset of a flood event, and a NOAA high tide and the end of a flood event for each location. This information was manually collected and put into a .csv from the R Data frames "StartWL" and "EndWL" created in the R code. Empty cells in the table are instances where there was no flood recorded at that station for that deployment period either due to no flood recorded, or due to no accelerometer at the site. 

4) Dep_Floods.xlsx is a workbook of the start and end timing of each flood event for each deployment. The data for the timing of the flood events was downloaded from R and manually checked for flooding events and for the closest NOAA high tide. This workbook is the final product of manually checking each flood event and matching it to the closest NOAA high tide. This process was used to double check the code that labeled flooding start and end events. Multible tables were created within the tabs of the excel workbook. Spaces throughout the sheet indicate a new table. 

Several figures were created to check the data throughout the process and uploaded as supplementary files.

Abbreviation Definitions/ Code Book:

WL = water level in meters

MLLW = mean low low water in meters

MHHW = mean high high water in meters

MHW = mean high water in meters

GMT = Greenwich mean time

EDT = Eastern Daylight Time

SumAcc = sum acceleration - given by the sensors through HOBOware - in meters per second squared

OTD = Onset Time Difference - the difference between the time of flooding onset from the NOAA high tide in hours. Deployment number is displayed as _1, _2, _3, and _4. 

ETD = End Time Difference - the difference between the time of flooding end from the NOAA high tide in hours. Deployment number is displayed as _1, _2, _3, and _4. 

NOAA_Dist = NOAA tidal station distance in meters

Elev = Elevation - deployment location elevation in meters

FIRM = Flood Insurance Rate Map

FLD_Zone = Flood zone

SE_flooding = Start/End Flooding

H_timedif = High tide time difference in hours