Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that new elevations for more than 340 bench marks in southern Louisiana, USA have been published.
The newly published values will provide official elevations in 27 parishes across the southern part of Louisiana that experienced damages from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The announcement was made at a ceremony attended by U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in Galliano, Louisiana.
This network of elevation bench marks, with additional Global Positioning Station (GPS) Continuously Operated Reference Stations (CORS), establishes an essential new network of vertical control to serve as benchmarks for south Louisiana. A large portion of the funding for this project was provided through a cooperative agreement between Noaa and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and included the cooperation of the Louisiana Spatial Reference Center at Louisiana State University located in Baton Rouge, La.
Use of the new elevations and vertical control network continues to be paramount in supporting hurricane recovery, repair and construction efforts. These new elevations and the control network will be needed in the future to enable projects such as evacuation routes, restoration projects and hurricane protection levee projects.
Planners will be better equipped to determine road and bridge heights relative to water and ground levels from this data, thus assuring restructured evacuation routes and shipping lanes will have the appropriate clearance to avoid flooding and obstructions.
Currently, Noaa’s National Geodetic Survey is analyzing the historical leveling, new leveling and GPS surveys. The data is being feed into updated scientific models to provide more accurate elevations on a number of additional benchmarks in southern Louisiana.
Source : KFOL/KJUN