Acadiana Regional Gauge Network

The Acadiana Planning Commission has partnered with the University of Louisiana’s Louisiana Watershed Flood Center and the Teche-Vermilion Fresh Water District to implement the Acadiana Regional Gauge Network. Our aim is to enrich water management decisions in Acadiana through gauge instrumentation and data collection. By improving water monitoring in the area, Acadiana residents and emergency personnel can actively engage in pre-disaster planning.

The objective is to design and deploy a regional gauge network for the eight parish service-area (Evangeline, St. Landry, Acadia, Lafayette, St. Martin, Vermilion, Iberia, and St. Mary) that will monitor flooding and rainfall. Developing a web-based public visualization interface for communicating real-time alerts is a priority. The Acadiana Regional Gauge Network will complement the Statewide LWI’s River & Rain Gauge Network, which is focused exclusively on developing a data-driven hydrological model. This project is funded by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP).

Partnering Agencies:

The Teche-Vermilion Fresh Water District supplies fresh water from the Atchafalaya River to Bayou Teche, the Vermilion River, and connects streams using a pumping station, control structures, and channels designed to divert, regulate and carry the flows.

The Louisiana Watershed Flood Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is leading the effort to establish a Lafayette-based center  of excellence for flood mitigation research and education. The Watershed Flood Center uses applied research to build local governmental capacity in flood risk mitigation decisions.