On April 8th 12 people gathered for the second in the Stormwater Workshop series. The goal of this event was to both learn about mapping and also capture aerial and ground survey images of the study sites. We will use these in the next workshop where we’ll be working on a study design for our questions.

We started the event by revisiting the research questions from the first workshop. Those are:

• How long does water stay standing in an area?
• How much rain does it take to flood?

We then prepared for our site surveys, balloon and pole mapping and headed outside. The first site we worked on was the Earth Lab site near the New Orleans Healing Center (more notes on the sites can be found in the writeup of Workshop 1. At this site we had trouble with the pole that we had brought. We found that someone had put it back together in correctly and one piece was stuck inside another and we were not able to set it up to its full height. However, we were able to get the balloon up and not only had success capturing the Earth Lab site, but we also got it high enough that we captured the Spain and Rampart site as well.

Here is an image that captures both sites:

Both Sites

The Spain and Rampart site

Map of the two sites:

Mapping EarthLab at the Healing Center
https://mapknitter.org/embed/earthlab

We were also able to capture some ground photos of the site from a ground photo survey. This will be helpful for us in remembering what exactly is at each site and where as we draft our study design.

Earth Lab

The Earth Lab Site

Across the Earth Lab site

Garden area

Stormwater overflow

Across the Earth Lab site towards Spain Street

Mapping the site

Spain and Rampart

While a group was mapping the Earth Lab, another went and did photo documentation of the Spain and Rampart site. Some images from this can be found below:

Down the street

Tree we believe caused the sidewalk to buckle

Street Corner

Looking back towards the site and towards St. Claude

Playground next to the site

Villere Street

The last site we went to was the one on Villere Street. There we were able to balloon map from an empty lot. We had a minor incident with the camera on our first attempt where it came unclipped and slid down the line, but we were able to get it back on. Luckily nothing broke. However, on our second attempt to get the camera up, it looks as if the images came out a little out of focus. This is likely because the first image was taken of something too close up, and the camera did not focus on the distance. The wind also blew our camera back towards St. Claude street and we only got a few images of Villere Street. See the map below.

Map: Villere street is the horizontal street on the top image.

4/8/17 mapping of Villere Street for the Stormwater Series
https://mapknitter.org/embed/villere-street

The edge of the road

Stormwater debris buildup

The only stormdrain we found on the street

Next Steps

The next workshop, May 13th, we will be Designing a Stormwater Study more info here). At that workshop, we will take everything we've gathered, learned, and want to know, and brainstorm ways to answer our research questions with tools and ideas we build together. Hope you can come!