Geotagged Photos Guide to Levees

USACE personnel are scouting the Mississippi River between Arkansas City and Eudora, Ark., to find evidence of water seeping under or through the levees. Each seep is photographed with a GPS-equipped Ricoh 500SE digital camera with built-in compass, which records the exact location of the seep and the direction from which the photo was taken. The photos are downloaded at the Emergency Field Office onto a computer running GPS-Photo Link software from GeoSpatial Experts.

The GPS-Photo Link software automatically correlates the photos with the locations where they were taken. The software then maps the photos along with any attribute data collected as icons in their correct geographic locations on a digital map of the area. USACE engineers and technicians in the Lake Village emergency office view the locations of the seeps on the map, click on the icons to examine the photos in detail, and assess the seriousness of the breach. By viewing the size and location of the water seep, the experts determine if there is risk of a levee failure.

The visual information contained in the digital photographs enables USACE personnel to prioritize the order in which the seeps must be reinforced with sandbags or repaired. The latitude-longitude coordinates embedded in each photo allow dispatchers to send repair crews directly to the precise spots in the levees where the breaches have appeared.

The ability of a crew to quickly find the correct seep is essential to the efficiency of the operation because many of the emergency personnel working the Mississippi floods have been deployed from elsewhere and are unfamiliar with the area. The dispatcher simply provides coordinates to the crews so that in-vehicle GPS units navigate them to the site where the damage has occurred.

The geotagged photographs will be stored in the district GIS so that USACE engineers can analyse the performance of the levees during the 2011 floods and consider implementing permanent structural repairs once the water has receded. This will help prevent seeps and breaches in the future.