Using 5G-connected flood sensors and community-driven solutions, the Verizon Disaster Resilience: Flood Sensor Initiative is helping New Orleans fight back against devastating storms.
Brandon Wong (center), Hyfi CEO and co-founder, shares flood sensor data onsite in New Orleans. Photo: Eli HIller.
For most people, a rainy day is just an inconvenience — extra traffic, a wet umbrella by the door. But for New Orleans residents, rain can mean something far more urgent: flooded streets, submerged cars and the unsettling question of whether today’s storm will be the one that upends their lives.
“It is stressful. When we see rain clouds forming, I check our weather app to see if we’re going to have rain,” says Jamie Clark, a longtime New Orleans resident. “And if we do, I try to make a game plan from there. It’s one more thing we have to take into consideration.”
The City of New Orleans has long relied on a patchwork of sources to monitor flooding, including alerts from the weather service, community reports, 311 calls, rainfall stations, and older, pressure transducer sensors that are time-intensive to install and maintain. Traditional flood monitoring systems, often designed for rivers, don’t work well in New Orleans’ bowl-like geography. The need for a more innovative climate tech solution is what made New Orleans the first city Verizon targeted for its new Verizon Disaster Resilience: Flood Sensor Initiative. In collaboration with technology startup Hyfi, the city of New Orleans, the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans and United Way of Southeast Louisiana (UWSELA), the flood sensor initiative utilizes Hyfi flood sensors that collect real-time data, transmitted over Verizon’s 5G network, and provides disaster preparedness workshops and resources for the community.
"With the flood sensor initiative, Verizon asked for everyone’s opinion — the entire city of New Orleans"
Jamie Clark, New Orleans resident
Unlike traditional models, Hyfi flood sensors use sonar technology to measure water levels. They send an acoustic pulse downward, bouncing it off the water’s surface to calculate the exact depth in seconds. This level of precision gives city officials, emergency responders and residents critical early warnings, allowing them to take action well before traditional methods would have provided warnings. The sensor units are also compact and modular and able to be fitted with traditional hardware to existing infrastructure, making them quick and easy to install at scale and to remove for repair or replacement.
Verizon first encountered this new technology three years ago when Hyfi applied for the inaugural Verizon Disaster Resilience Prize. Hyfi was awarded funding and mentorship to scale their business, and the partnership led to the development of this flood sensor initiative, built to tackle a growing national need.
“Flooding is the most deadly and destructive of natural disasters,” says Hyfi CEO and co-founder Brandon Wong. “It affects all communities across the United States, and there is little to no real-time information to provide an early warning for communities and their citizens.”
Supporting the most vulnerable in the community is what lies at the heart of all Verizon Disaster Resilience programs. Flooding disproportionately affects low-income communities, where aging infrastructure, financial insecurity and limited access to emergency resources can make recovery difficult. That’s why, in addition to the flood sensors, Verizon and UWSELA are equipping residents with the tools and training needed to know how to better prepare and recover more quickly from disasters.
“A natural disaster is traumatic because you don’t know what sort of damage will be done to your property,” says Michael Williamson, UWSELA president and CEO. “But also knowing that you can’t afford to get your loved ones, your pets — all the things you care about — to a place of safety and security is extremely stressful.” Through preparedness workshops, flood education sessions and community-driven decision-making, Verizon and UWSELA are ensuring that residents are informed and actively involved in shaping solutions.
“With the flood sensor initiative, Verizon asked for everyone’s opinion — the entire city of New Orleans, community members, local officials,” Clark says. “It’s something you take pride in. [T]hey value us in New Orleans. They value the residents and understand that we need to be here.”
And the benefits go beyond disaster response. By providing real-time data over the long term, these sensors could change how New Orleans plans for the future, helping officials pinpoint infrastructure weaknesses and design smarter solutions.
Austin Feldbaum, director of hazard mitigation for the city of New Orleans, explains, “We hope that with these longer-term data sets in hand, we’ll be able to use that to develop predictive models that will improve our ability to understand what the problems are with our existing infrastructure and then design solutions.”
New Orleans is just the beginning.
“Disasters are becoming more and more common, and we all live and work in these communities,” says Carrie Hughes, associate vice president of social innovation programs and operations at Verizon. “We really want to capitalize on our company’s history of responding to disasters to help our network, but also to help the community and provide them with the technology and the resources they need to better prepare for, get through and recover from these increasing natural disasters.”
For more information and to learn more, visit Verizon Disaster Resilience.
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