The International Flash Flood Laboratory (IFFL) inaugural workshop took place Monday, October 19, 2009 on the campus of Texas State University-San Marcos. The workshop received internal support from the Lovell Center, the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of Geography, the River Systems Institute, the Texas Center for Geographic Information Science, and Gamma Theta Upsilon. The workshop also attracted major sponsorship from the following enties, to whom we extend special thanks:

Sutron Corporation (stream gauging, weather monitoring, and flood warning systems),

High Sierra Electronics, Inc. (hydrological monitoring systems and meteorological instruments),

Halff Associates, Inc. (flood warning systems, stormwater, and floodplain management), and

Texas A&M's Texas Spatial Reference Center (dedicated to improving our understanding of Texas' elevation, geodetic, and vertical datums). 

Annually, the James and Marilyn Lovell Center hosts a Lovell Distinguished Lecture. This year, in honor of the IFFL’s inception, the Distinguished Lecture served as the keynote address used to launch the workshop’s activities, and included introductory remarks by the President of Texas State University, Dr. Denise Trauth. The lecture was delivered by Dr. Eve Gruntfest, a widely published and internationally recognized expert in warning systems, flash floods, and the challenge of integrating the social and atmospheric sciences. Gruntfest was presented the 2009 Kenneth E. Spengler Award from the American Meteorological Society, and is currently Chair of  Societal Impacts on the American Meteorological Society’s Board and Director of Social Science Woven into Meteorology (SSWIM) at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Some of her numerous accomplishments include: research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado; founder and co-Director of the “WAS * IS” (Weather and Society Integrated Studies) movement (www.sip.ucar.edu/wasis); recipient of National Science Foundation funding to evaluate warnings for short-fuse weather events; Fulbright Scholar at the University of Trieste, Italy; co-editor of Coping with Flash Floods (Kluwer 2000); organizer of the 1999 NATO Advanced Studies Institute in Ravello, Italy, on which Coping with Flash Floods is based, invited senior scholar at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and Associate Editor for the Journal of Flood Risk Management. Dr. Gruntfest originated the concept of creating the IFFL, and has agreed to serve as co-Director of the laboratory.

After Dr. Gruntfest delivered her lecture ("Hydro-Socio-Meteoro-logy: Essential Elements for Flash Flood  Mitigation and Research"), workshop participants spent the day determining what the laboratory's "first steps" should be to meet the common goal of reducing flash flood fatalities and property losses.

Attendees represented a wide variety of organizations and agencies from local/regional/state/national and international levels (see below), meeting the event's goal of building the IFFL "from the bottom up" via participants' observations and experiences. 

A formal synopsis of the workshop's findings is under development, and will be posted as soon as it is available. Until then, the basic conclusion by day's end was that there is a pressing need for coordinated flash flood "Data/Research/Communication". We (IFFL co-founders Gruntfest, Showalter, and Ruin -- see main IFFL page), spent the day following the workshop discussing different approaches to tacking the data/research/education "directive" and have begun communicating participants' observations to individuals and agencies who may be able to assist in achieving these goals. As work continues, this website will expand to communicate how our efforts are progressing.

We  are extremely grateful to all who attended the workshop to share insights and offer suggestions that will ultimately serve to improve the "flash flood community's" ability to effectively address these events. With your help, the IFFL's inaugural workshop was a resounding success!

Eve Gruntfest, Pamela S. Showalter, and Isabelle Ruin

Breakout Groups Brainstorm

A special "Thank You" goes to our Breakout Group facilitators -- Kevin Barrett, Denise Blanchard, Terry Colgan, and Hector Guerrero as well as the students who assisted them -- David Hickman, Eric Samson, Susan Street, and Jason Vickrey. We're also very grateful to the many other students who generously volunteered their time throughout the day.

Representatives from the following organizations participated in the workshop:

Bexar County

Capital Area Council of Governments

City of Llano

City of New Braunfels

City of San Antonio

Civil Air Patrol

David Ford Consulting Engineers

Fayette County

Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority

Halff Associates, Inc.

Harris County

Hays County

High Sierra Electronics, Inc.

KTBC-TV Fox 7-Austin

Lower Colorado River Authority

National Center for Atmospheric Research

National Geodetic Survey

National Oceanic and Atmopheric Administration

National Weather Service

Stephen F. Austin State University

Sutron Corporation

Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi

Texas Association of Counties

Texas Department of State Health Services

Texas Floodplain Management Association

Texas State University-San Marcos

Texas Water Development Board

Time Warner Cable - News 8 Austin

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

University of Oklahoma

University of Texas - San Antonio

Upper San Marcos Watershed Reclamation and Flood Control District

Williamson County

Workshop's Major Sponsors

Workshop's TSU-SM Supporters

^{This page was last updated November 9, 2009}