After a series of heavy natural disasters over the past few years Houstonians have been invested in trying to solve the cities’ flooding problem now more than ever. The Greater Houston Area has had a notorious history with flooding problems that have been caused by natural issues, such as heavy rainfall, lack of elevation and drainage. There are also the issues caused by the city’s growth such as urban sprawl and subsidence. As a group we’ll look at and plot some of the major causes onto multiple ArcGIS maps from collected and informed data sources to examine what communities may experience now or in the future struggle with flooding.

                Our ArcGIS maps will use data from pre-existing sources, that are as recent as possible, to comparatively plot issues together. These issues will consist of both man-made and natural problems that are documented in the greater Houston area such as soil type, soil porosity, bayou/drainage locations, subsidence rates, urban sprawl and possibly more. After the initial maps are finished, we will attempt to layer them to see if there are any correlations and analyze their relationship between each other and the city.

                Houston’s poorly draining soil issues are widely spread across the city and well documented so we expect to see some results in that aspect, but another natural correlation might occur from the city’s elevation and drainage bayous. The man-made issues may be more difficult to discover or interpret but there’s potential to find some flags raised in densely populated areas where factors such as flood control may have been an after thought in design. Lastly, we can interpolate the data collected to see if the city’s faults could be or were in any way impacted during the recent flooding events.