Case Study: Texas Water Development Board achieves statewide flood risk coverage with Fathom

The first statewide flood planning program

The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) was challenged with creating the first-ever statewide flood plan for Texas, a task mandated by the state legislature. A significant obstacle was the lack of publicly available flood data, with 63 counties having no existing flood maps. To address this, the TWDB worked with Fathom to incorporate its advanced flood data to plug these gaps and create a consistent statewide flood risk layer.

Fathom compiled a high-resolution digital elevation model of the entire state and ran a customized hydraulic model to compute flood depths for various frequencies at a 10ft resolution. This data was integrated into a "flood quilt" with other sources, providing the TWDB with the comprehensive and consistent flood risk dataset it required for effective planning. The successful solution delivered by Fathom provided a model that could be applied to other states and beyond.

Texas Water Development Board

Reem Zoun

Director of Flood Planning