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Thursday, October 21, 2021

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RAPID RESPONSE BRINGS CALM AFTER THE STORM

High water from the Tittabawasse River and its tributaries caused serious damage
and safety issues at more than 100 locations in Midland County.

June 1, 2020
3552


A MICHIGAN CONSULTANCY COMBINES INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY WITH STRONG WORKING
RELATIONSHIPS TO AID PUBLIC SAFETY AND FACILITATE RAPID RECOVERY FROM A MAJOR
FLOOD.

By John Stenmark

The rain hit on an early summer Friday. In June 2017 a freakish storm, later
described as a once-in-500-year rain event, dropped more than 7 inches of water
on central Michigan in just 36 hours. The storm was concentrated over a
relatively small area. Midland County, home to roughly 83,000 people, was hit
especially hard.

Near the city of Midland, the Tittabawasse River quickly rose to flood stage and
beyond. On Saturday the river crested at 32.15 feet, more than eight feet above
flood stage. It reached the second-highest level in more than 30 years. In less
than two days the river flow jumped from 3,200 cubic feet per second (cfs) to
more than 39,000 cfs. The flooding inundated homes, businesses and
infrastructure, inflicting millions of dollars in damage.

The county’s roads were hit especially hard. By Saturday morning, the Midland
County Road Commission had closed roads in more than 120 locations throughout
the county. The reasons for closures emphasized safety and ranged from standing
water to washouts, damaged pavement and loss of culverts and drainage
structures. The MCRC needed to act quickly to assess the damage and get repairs
underway. The effort included identifying areas requiring immediate attention
and developing plans for temporary or permanent repairs. The amount of urgent
work was overwhelming. But there was good news: MCRC had a solid partner who was
ready to go to work.

Aerial image reveals the damage at Shaffer Road. The washed out culvert is
visible to the right of the road.

Rapid Response

Led by MCRC Managing Director Terry Palmer, the response to the crisis began
immediately. “On Monday morning, we took stock, prioritized the damage and
determined which roads we could open with minor repairs,” Palmer said. “There
were over a dozen water crossings that would require more major repairs—which is
when OHM Advisors called and offered to assist. They had a team ready to assess
our crossings and start the process of obtaining topographic data for the major
failures.” Craig Schripsema, manager of OHM Advisors’ office in Midland,
deployed the firm’s survey teams to the affected area.

The relationship between MCRC and OHM Advisors had developed over many years. A
Michigan-based firm providing architecture, engineering and planning for clients
in the public and private sectors, OHM Advisors employs more than 500 people in
16 offices across three states. “We work alongside Midland County on many
projects,” said OHM Advisors Survey Practice Leader Ray Lillibridge. “We don’t
offer typical solutions; we bring forth the best solution customized for the
county and not what’s most profitable for us. That approach to innovation has
really helped strengthen our partnership.”

By Monday the county emergency services were in the field identifying washed out
bridges and culverts. The locations were marked on a paper map at the MCRC
office. Lillibridge quickly added the locations to a GIS application so the
information could be readily shared among OHM Advisors’ teams. “Once we started
plotting known washouts, we were logistically able to create a plan of attack,”
he said. “We knew a couple of sites had no access, in which case we had to wait
for the county to bring in temporary solutions.

On Tuesday morning two OHM Advisors field crews began surveying the damaged
areas. They needed to gather data that would enable their engineers to evaluate
the damage and develop plans to repair or rebuild the sites. In addition to
often-circuitous routes to the sites, the two-person field crews faced soggy
conditions and unstable, potentially dangerous slopes near the edges of the
washouts. Lillibridge determined that the best and safest approach to quickly
producing accurate information would be a blend of field technologies including
unmanned aerial systems (UAS), GNSS and total stations.

At each site, OHM Advisors surveyors conducted a quick walkaround before setting
ground control points (GCP) for the aerial imagery. They marked the points using
chevron targets. The crews set a minimum of four GCP at each site, placing two
on each side of the washout. One point was set as close as safely possible to
the washout, and the second on the road up to 400 feet away.

OHM Advisors captured the location of the GCPs using Trimble R10 GNSS receivers
with Trimble TSC3 controllers running Trimble Access software. Connected by
NTRIP (Network Transmission via Internet Protocol) to the Michigan DOT real time
GNSS network, the R10s produced precise positions for each GCP. The R10
delivered coordinates tied directly to the required Michigan state plane
coordinate zone. “We can connect our R10 receivers to the MDOT network anywhere
we have cellular coverage,” Lillibridge said. “That way we can be confident that
everything we collect can be used in the future.” At each site the crews used
GNSS to collect a handful of check points needed to verify the accuracy of the
aerial data.

With control in place, OHM employed a DJI Phantom 4 Pro to capture aerial
imagery. Where vegetation prevented aerial work, they used a Trimble S7 total
station to capture details of the washout. On average, the crews spent roughly
one hour surveying at each site and completed 12 sites in two days. “Those were
long days,” Lillibridge recalled. “Once we were actually on a location, things
went quickly. It was the logistics of getting between the sites that presented a
problem. At some places we had to go miles out of our way to get back into the
other side of the sites.” Over the course of the next week and a half, the
county identified an additional six sites that had been compromised. OHM
Advisors crews surveyed them as well.

Integrating the Data

At the end of each day Lillibridge downloaded each site’s photos (roughly 60
images) to Esri Drone2Map for ArcGIS software. The GNSS data for control and
check points was exported in CSV format directly to the Esri software, which
produced a georeferenced point cloud. Lillibridge then transferred the point
cloud to Trimble Business Center software (TBC). “We’re familiar with TBC for
point cloud manipulation, so we were able to clean up the clouds and pull
contours,” he said. “Then we exported all of that to Civil3D. Our work flow is
such that no matter where the data was coming from, our CAD technicians would
see the same thing and have the same thing to manipulate, whether it was from
the drone software or TBC as GNSS points or total station points. Once it gets
to the CAD techs it looks identical.” Because TBC supports all common industry
data standards, transfers were accomplished via simple drag and drop of project
files.

Lillibridge also used TBC to check the accuracy of the aerial work. “For this
project, our tolerance was 0.15 ft vertical,” he said. “But I cannot recall any
being over a tenth in vertical difference. These projects hit their checkpoints
with minimal error.”

Preparation of deliverables moved quickly. OHM Advisors’ in-house engineering
teams reviewed the field data and developed plans for rebuilding or replacing
damaged structures. The firm had previously worked with the county to develop a
design for Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil-Integrated Bridge System (GRS-IBS) that
provides flexible design and low maintenance. They provided sizes for the
replacement bridges and the county’s contractors could then mold the road to fit
the structure. As a result, aside from re-verifying the control, OHM Advisors
did not need to provide any construction surveying.

Road repair plan developed from aerial image data.

Visual Confirmation

As construction wrapped up, OHM Advisors used the opportunity to incorporate the
Microsoft HoloLens 3D mixed reality headset. To do this, they exported design
models from TBC to Trimble SketchUp software. Next, they used Trimble Connect to
load the design data polylines into HoloLens along with a decimated version of
the original washout surface model. In the field, they used Trimble Connect to
orient to the site. They could then visually compare the finished conditions
with the original surfaces. “It was really interesting on the HoloLens to see
the base surface from when the washout occurred. The original data looked like a
cliff in the new road where the washout had been,” Lillibridge said.

OHM Advisors has used HoloLens, SketchUp and Trimble Connect on other projects
as well, primarily for pre-construction design and conception. For example, they
recently did a project for a community firefighter memorial. The client wanted
to see how planned flagpoles impacted the park site and how the monument sizes
would fit the park. OHM Advisors experts visited the site with local officials,
each using the HoloLens to visualize the finished project. The design work was
done using Autodesk products and loaded into Trimble Connect for the field
visualization.

In reviewing lessons learned from the Midland County flooding, Lillibridge said
the effort confirmed what OHM Advisors has been doing. The approach of using UAS
to supplement traditional survey methods proved to be stable and efficient.

MCRC’s Palmer emphasized the speed of the work. As the floodwaters receded, the
commission set a goal to rebuild and reopen four key sites by the end of
October. Palmer said that they completed the structure replacements with new
GRS-IBS’ designed by OHM Advisors.

“I was amazed by the efficiency and professionalism of the OHM Advisors survey
team,” Palmer said. “With minimal direction, they prioritized the areas to
obtain data, collected data on multiple sites in one day and began delivering
topographic data to the engineering design team in less than 72 hours. We then
authorized data collection at additional sites and that information was
delivered within three days. This allowed the engineering team to accurately
assess the cost to restore nine road crossings, making our applications for
emergency funds faster and more accurate.”

The performance of OHM Advisors was recognized by the industry. The company
received the 2018 Eminent Conceptor Award from the American Council of
Engineering Companies and the 2018 Project of the Year Award from the Michigan
Chapter of the American Public Works Association.

Lillibridge credits OHM Advisors multiple technologies as the key to success.
“Using a mix of technologies and methods is really beneficial in emergency
situations. A lot of people think that traditional surveying is sufficient. But
from a safety perspective, that’s not the best way. You can keep your personnel
out of harm’s way, and because of the built-in efficiencies, you’re able to
provide solutions much faster than with traditional methods.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Stenmark is a writer and consultant working in the AEC and technical
industries. He has more than 20 years of experience in applying advanced
technology to surveying and related disciplines.

 * TAGS
 * AEC
 * AEC industries
 * CAD technicians
 * Civil3D
 * CS0620
 * flood
 * geosynthetic reinforced soil-integrated bridge system
 * GNSS
 * GRS-IBS
 * HoloLens
 * John Stenmark
 * MCRM
 * OHM Advisors
 * safety
 * SketchUp
 * storm
 * TBC
 * technical industries
 * Tittabawasse River
 * Trimble Business Center software
 * Trimble Connect
 * UAS
 * UAV
 * unmanned aerial systems
 * unmanned systems

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