Shane Montoya
He/Him
Explora Science Center and Children’s Museum
Thriving Earth Exchange Fellowship
Shane Montoya is the Director of Exhibits and Operations at Explora. He focuses his efforts on supporting and contributing to the development of Explora’s Cradle Through Career STEAM Learning Campus.
Community Partner
The Kentuckiana Regional Planning & Development Agency (KIPDA) helps oversee environmental and community planning, economic development initiatives, transportation projects, and social services for the greater Louisville region, which includes seven counties in Kentucky and two counties in Indiana.
It serves as the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, Area Development District, Economic Development District, and Area Agency on Aging and Independent Living.
Project Description
The Greater Louisville Region is heavily impacted by flooding and has inconsistent planning in place to mitigate these risks.
This project focused on updating the regional Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP) with a Flood Susceptibility Index (FSI) informed by scientific data collected and interpreted by a Geospatial Analyst/Data Scientist. The FSI went beyond traditional floodplain mapping to analyze the distribution of reported flood locations and a variety of flood-related factors, such as the topographic wetness index and combined sewer service areas.
The FSI provided a more holistic look at flood risk in the Greater Louisville Region and is a useful tool for making decisions about future hazard mitigation projects and flood policies across the region.
The focus of this data collection and interpretation project was on the Greater Louisville Region, which includes Jefferson County and eight other counties. This region is a combination of urban and rural communities with a population of roughly 1.2 million and spans both Kentucky and Indiana.
There is a challenging combination of hazard preparedness levels between the counties in the region and this project brought cohesiveness to the hazard mitigation project planning for these counties with the addition of an FSI to the HMP.