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Disasters

Successful application of predictive technology could save lives, money

In a bipartisan effort, state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, and state Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp, D-Arvada, are working together to create a five-year, $10 million program to put in place advanced new technologies to aid in predicting the behavior of fires and floods. If the technology involved works nearly as well as first reports suggest, that could be seen as the best spending decision the Legislature ever made.

What is involved is a new way to look at fires and floods to take into account all that has been learned about how disasters unfold. Largely the product of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, based in Boulder, the new technology particularly entails advanced weather forecasting, enabling researchers to show how events interact with the atmosphere. With that, models can look at winds, slopes, temperature and other factors that might influence the course of the disaster.

For fires, that would include the character and quantity of fuel available, as well as the winds and weather the fire itself could create. Accurate predictions of rainfall, especially localized data, can be combined with data about stream flows to predict the direction and intensity of flooding.

Understanding and being able to make accurate predictions about how a fire or flood will behave should allow both those responding to a disaster and those simply trying to avoid it to make better, more timely and more relevant decisions. Authorities can devote resources, not just to those areas most in need but to those that will need them. They also should be able to direct homeowners, residents and evacuees where to go and how best to avoid inadvertently interfering with emergency efforts.

This new technology has been made possible by huge advances in computers but also because researchers have realized that with that technology they now can amass hundreds of thousands of data points surrounding a single large event. Using only a few such forecast points, accurately predicting the path and severity of Colorado floods in 2013 was hard. Applying the new technology to the same 2013 floods, however, showed researchers they could determine the direction and intensity of the floods well before populated areas were affected.

And as with every emergency, time is everything. The developers of the new predictive technology think the new modeling could give as much as 12 hours warning as to how a disaster could travel. In the kind of situations that can develop in wildfires or with flooding, dangerous situations where events are measured in minutes or even seconds, 12 hours is huge.

And with that, so, too, could be the savings – in lives, property, heartache, private and public money. Coloradans do not need that explained. The 2013 floods on the Front Range caused a number of deaths and more than $1 billion in damage. Wildfires in 2012 killed several people and took hundreds of structures.

The state’s $10 million easily could be recouped in the response to just one event. And every fire season, every potential flood from there on out would amount to an ever-increasing return on what in the scheme of things is a small investment.

Sen. Roberts and Rep. Kraft-Tharp are doing the right thing in recognizing and supporting the potential of this new application of technology. They furthermore are demonstrating that legislators can reach across the aisle when what is good for Colorado is at stake. Lawmakers of both parties should join them in this.



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