CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) -
The City of Charleston is getting creative when it comes to flooding in the downtown area by using grant money to develop an emergency alert system.
The city is one of 35 in the country to receive a $100,000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies 2018 Mayors Challenge.
The goal is to come up with an innovative solution to a major problem in the city.
“The City of Charleston is working really, really hard on dealing with flooding, but we have it pretty challenging here in Charleston," Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Charleston Mark Wilbert said.
Wilbert is working with a team to create an app, called Floodcon, which would allow people who live and work in the city to prepare when flooding is in the future.
"We put a large and small team together here within the City of Charleston with partners in the community like the National Weather Service and MUSC," Wilbert said. "We also reached out throughout the community and we developed our idea over a series of months.”
The app would use an algorithm combining tide and weather information to predict flooding as well as give real-time updates when it comes to flooded roads.
"We just want to put it in one location for them so they can use it make it personalized for them and hopefully we can all learn and make better decisions so our workdays are more productive," Wilbert said.
The city is currently in the running to win one of the top five spots in the 2018 Mayors Challenge.
First place gets a $5 million grant and the other four get a $1 million grant to use towards their project.
You can read more about the Mayors Challenge and other cities in the running by clicking: here.
Wilbert said if they are a finalist and get the funding they can roll the app out to the public. He expects to find out if the city makes the top five by the end of 2018.
Copyright 2018 WCSC. All rights reserved.