Maps

Maps, Online Resources

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The Galveston District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has made public a set of interactive maps — normally used by emergency personnel — that show which areas along the length of Buffalo Bayou are predicted to remain under water or emerge from it as officials continue to release water from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs upstream. Individual interactive map panels cover each day from September 5th through the 16th, but as of this date all rely on data developed on Tuesday, when the maps were created.

The embedded version above mimics the view from a mobile browser; you can zoom in to view the projected water line on any street. To switch days, click on one side or the other of the panel at the bottom of the frame — or choose the date directly from the menu that appears after you click on the icon in the top left corner.

To view the map in its own browser window, click here.

Addicks and Barker Projected Inundation Levels [USACE Galveston]
Know How High the River Flows [Save Buffalo Bayou]

Map: USACE Galveston District

Inundation Levels, Day by Day

Bayous and Waterways, Buffalo Bayou, Flooding, Maps, Online Resources

09/04/17 9:30am

Your Map to the Houston-Area Hotels and Motels Where FEMA Pays

Hotels, Maps, Online Resources

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If you or someone you’re helping has been accepted into FEMA’s Transitional Shelter Assistance program — meant to clear out shelters by providing people who can’t return to their homes a hotel or motel room for a limited period of time — you may want to use the map shown here. It marks the locations of every eligible hotel or motel in the Houston area approved by the program. Using the map should make it easier to find an acceptable one nearby. To view the map in its own browser window, click here.

This map is yet another whipped-up-by-volunteers-in-a-jiffy product of Sketch City — this one created by the civic hacking group’s founder, Jeff Reichman. Sketch City volunteer and college sophomore Nile Dixon (who earlier created a similar tool to help people find nearby shelters) has created a simplified text-it-to-me version of it as well: Just text your ZIP Code toÂ 832-981-4926 and a bot will send back contact info for the nearest verified accommodations in the program.

You can find out more about U.S. government Harvey assistance, including the TSA program, from theÂ FEMA Harvey website.

Map: Sketch City

Harvey Maps

Disaster Aftermath, FEMA, Hotels, Hurricane Harvey, Maps, Online Resources

09/01/17 3:30pm

How To Zoom In on the Very Latest Aerial Pics of Houston’s High Water Spots

Flooding, Maps, Memorial, Memorial Glen, Online Resources

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Here’s the latest publicly available high-resolution aerial imagery of Houston-area flooding, in an interactive map you can use to zoom in and examine in detail and by address. The imagery in the map above comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was taken this past Wednesday and Thursday, August 29th and 30th — as floodwaters subsided in many areas of the city but continued to build in a few parts west.

Included in the portions of the city photographed by NOAA: the sections of Memorial south of I-10, west of Gessner Rd., north of Briar Forest Dr. (that’s below Buffalo Bayou), and east of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs. That’s the area where Mayor Turner earlier today said residents who already have water in their homes should probably leave their homes now if they haven’t already — because water is likely to remain in them for the next 10 to 15 days as releases from the dams continue.

To zoom in on the latest aerial imagery from that area, you can click on the search box in the map above and type “Memorial, Houston,” then click on the first option that appears below where you’re typing. Then zoom in further to see where the floodwaters are and aren’t. You can identify the date of the imagery and turn on and off various layers if you click on the lower of the 2 icons on the top right of the map. To view the map larger in your browser window, navigate directly to NOAA’s Harvey site.

Harvey Flooding from Above

Aerial Photos, Disaster Aftermath, Flooding, Hurricane Harvey, Maps, Memorial, Memorial Glen, Online Resources

08/29/17 8:45pm

The Best Way To Find Out Which Hurricane Harvey Shelters Near You Need Help, and What They Need

Houston Data, Maps, Online Resources

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Here’s another helpful online tool from the civic hackers at Sketch City, this one for would-beÂ volunteers: a crowdsourced, interactive map showing which shelters near you are in need of what resources — and which ones might need people to come over and help out. Each icon on the map represents a shelter or providing organization that’s helping evacuees who’ve been put out of their homes by Harvey flooding. Click on one and a panel on the left will indicate any supply needs or volunteer needs identified by the site. (A larger, full-browser-width version of the map is here.)

The map was put together by Amanda Shih, Dr. Neeraj Tandon, and Chris Ertel, and is linked to data assembled and continually updated by a group of dozens of local and not-so-local volunteers hooked up to the project by Sketch City, a Houston nonprofit technology group. (The same bank of is behind Sketch City’s other new mapping project — one that simply identifies available Harvey shelters to people seeking them.) The volunteers have been making regular phone calls to update the information in a shared Google Doc. (If that kind of call-and-type-from-home work is your preferred method of volunteering, go ahead — you’ll find a direct link to the underlying spreadsheet in the map.)

Harvey Needs [Sketch City on Github]
Previously onÂ Swamplot:Â The Quickest Way To Find the Nearest Hurricane Harvey Shelter That Isn’t Already Full

How and Where To Volunteer

Disaster Aftermath, Houston Data, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Shelters, Maps, Online Resources

08/29/17 10:30am

Here’s a Map of the West Houston Neighborhoods Behind the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs Threatened by Overflow

Flooding, Hazards, Maps, West Houston

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The map above outlines the actual locations of neighborhoods designated by officials yesterday as being at risk from flooding over the back sides of Houston’s dual Buffalo Bayou reservoirs — in advance of actual spillovers, which began last night and continued this morning. The map was put together by Chronicle data reporter John D. Harden, using information from the Harris County Flood Control District. Zoom in and you can identify specific streets and neighborhoods on the upstream side of Addicks (in red) and Barker (in blue) reservoirs.

Names of the affected neighborhoods are listed on the map’s fly-out panel, available by clicking on the icon at the top left corner of the map. Click on the icon at the top right corner to enlarge the map if you need to.

To lessen the risk of flooding to these areas, officials have been releasing water out the other end, through the Addicks and Barker dams into Buffalo Bayou — possibly (depending on bayou water levels) endangering neighborhoods and structures downstream.

A weary Houston likely to endure catastrophic flooding through Wednesday [Houston Chronicle]
Officials fear rising rivers, failing levees [Houston Chronicle]

Map: Houston Chronicle

Addicks Reservoir, Barker Reservoir, Disaster Aftermath, Flooding, Hurricane Harvey, Maps, West Houston

04/12/17 12:45pm

Winners of the Super Bowl Alcohol Sales Boost: Treasures, ClÃ©, Axelrad, and More

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Super Bowl Alcohol Sales Boost Map

“I canâ€™t explain how a Chiliâ€™s got on the list, but that Chiliâ€™s must have been pretty lit,” writes engineer andÂ bar aficionado Ian Wells.Â Wells just wrapped up his latest data-crunchingÂ escapade: a diveÂ into how much extraÂ alcohol sales revenueÂ wasÂ actually pulled in by Super Bowl LIÂ (as well asÂ whereÂ that boost was distributed and who bagged most of the excess). The map above gives an idea of how theÂ $8.9 million in extra alcohol sales (plus or minus a couple million) were spread out around town during February; Wells notes thatÂ probablyÂ only 5%Â of establishmentsÂ saw more than a $25,000 boost above what they would have made in a normal February, though there’s lot of uncertainty in modeling any given bar’s expected “normal” revenue.

So who gotÂ the biggest percentage sales bumps?Â Here’s the rundown through the top 10, and some highlights fromÂ the top 100, plus more on where all those numbers come from:

Crunching the Numbers

Data, Maps, Super Bowl, TABC

03/29/17 9:30am

How Houstonians Can Get in Shape in the Shape of Texas

Houston Heights, Maps

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Houston Heights Run Resembling the Shape of Texas

Swamplot reader Brendan Mahoney, an Aussie transplant, writes in to report a discovery he and his running partner made just a few weeks ago while out on a run in the Heights area: “The new 2 mile section of the White Oak Bayou Greenway that opened recently looks like the great state of Texas.” Mahoney’s kinda-familiar path (and split times) are visible in the screenshot of his running app, above. Here’s a closeup:

Heights Lone Star-ish Lap

77007, Heights Hike-and-Bike Trail, Houston Heights, Maps

12/22/16 12:00pm

Abandoned Orphan Oil Wells Around Town Wait For Closure

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Texas RRC orphaned wells, by Luke Whyte for the Texas Tribune

Texas RRC orphaned wells, by Luke Whyte for the Texas Tribune The map above (a snap from Luke Whyte’s click-and-zoom-able original version, published this week by the Texas Tribune) shows the abandonedÂ oil and gas wells scattered in and around the Houston area, per the officialÂ accounting of the Texas Railroad Commission. The state agency (which has had nothing to do with railroads sinceÂ 2005) regulates pipelines, oil, and gas, and keeps tabs on so-called “orphaned wells” whose original owners have stopped keeping tabsÂ on them for one reason or another, writes Jim Malewitz this week — the ones that were reported in the first place, that is.Â Kerry Knorpp, formerly on a defunct state committee overseeing oilfield cleanup efforts, also tells Malewitz that â€œthere is about to be a tsunami of [newly] abandoned wells — wells were drilled at $110 oil that you would have never completed otherwise.â€

The shaded hexagons above are meant to help show theÂ density of those holes, not the degree to which they might pose a pollution hazard (though the agency ranks eachÂ well by its hazard potential, too, to help it decide which ones to plug up first, of the more than 10,000 currently on the docket).

Just what kind of hazards can a bunch of abandonedÂ holes pose, anyway?

Boom and Bust

Maps, Oil, Pollution, State Laws

12/07/16 2:30pm

Where Houston Floods Outside the Flood Zones

Flooding, Maps

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from Boomtown, Floodtown (Texas Tribune and ProPublica)

From some of the same folks who brought you those fun-with-worst-case-scenarios hurricane flood maps earlier this year — Â Neena Satija and Kiah Collier of the Texas Tribune, and Al Shaw of ProPublica — comes a freshÂ set ofÂ animatedÂ maps of a few of Harris County’s most flooded and floodable places, along with a bit of investigation into how they got that wayÂ (and whether that might change any time soon).Â The new illustrated presentationÂ showsÂ off the spread of properties that took a dip during some of Harris County’s last few citywideÂ submersion eventsÂ (flooded properties from Tax Day 2016 are shown in yellow above, along with the Memorial Day 2015 flooded properties in orange).

Texas A&M Galveston researcher Sam Brody tells the authors that â€œmore people die here than anywhere else from floods. More property per capita is lost here. And the problemâ€™s getting worse.â€Â In sorting through some of the whos, whats, and hows of Harris County’s flood infrastructure and chronically soggy residents, the article juxtaposesÂ the recent flood damage dataÂ with the likes of FEMA-mapped 100- and 500-year flood zonesÂ (shown above), a visual tally of theÂ land area developed last decade,Â and a view of what’s left of Houston’sÂ coastal prairieÂ (as of 2010):

Harris High Water

Development Patterns, Flooding, Harris County, Land Use, Maps, Reservoirs

11/28/16 10:45am

A Map of BARC’s Dog, Cat Call Hotspots

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WhereÂ doÂ Houston’s furrierÂ residents tend to congregate? Jeff Reichman’s latest city data tinkering provides some cluesÂ — the clickable heatmap above highlights the areas where the city’s BARC program gotÂ the most calls this year forÂ services like stray pickups and code enforcements related to domestic animals.Â BARC is currently in the middle of a 3-month push for a 90-percent no-kill rate of its collected and surrendered menagerie, after a successful 1-month push for that rate last November; the average euthanization rate for the program reportedly flipped from about 80 percent euthanizedÂ to about 80 percent released aliveÂ between 2005 and 2015.

Hot Dog Neighborhoods

City Services, Dogs, Maps, Stray Animals

11/14/16 9:15am

UPDATED: Where Trump Lost Harris County, Mapped

Houston Data, Maps

34 Comments

Update, November 22: The finalized county precinct data has been incorporated into the map above; a layer showing voter turnout has been added as well.

With allÂ 1,012 precincts shaded in by civic data whizÂ Jeff Reichman, the interactive map above of last week’s election resultsÂ shows both stark splits and gray areas in blue-swung Harris County, which gave only 41.8 percent of its vote to Wrestlemania hall-of-famer and historically litigious president-elect Donald Trump. TheÂ red-to-blue shading showsÂ who won by what percentage,Â with resultsÂ ranging from count-’em-on-one-hand margins to total blowouts for one major candidate or the other. You canÂ click on each precinct to see the breakdown of votes and turnout (though Stein, Johnson, and McMullin voters will have to look elsewhereÂ for the details on those candidates’ spreads).

On the east side of town, the red-blue divide runs roughly along the track of Beltway 8; the border of thatÂ central dark blue zone stretches north to include Greenspoint and then runs east alongÂ FM 1960 to 290.Â The split gets murkierÂ on the west side of the Inner and Outer Loops, with many precincts showing much closer margins. More noticeably red areas inside Beltway 8 showÂ up near Memorial, River Oaks, Bellaire, and Shepherd Park Plaza — plus spots like tiny Precinct 0830 on S. Main, where TrumpÂ took a total of 3 votes to Clinton’s 1.

Previously on Swamplot:Â Where Houston’s Trump and Sanders Supporters Are Clustered, and Other Election Data Mapping Fun

Map of presidential election results by precinct: Jeff Reichman

Post-Election Breakdown

Elections, Houston Data, Maps

Bellaire

10/31/16 12:00pm

From Hwy. 6 to Baytown, a Map of Your Neighborhood’s Nearest Hazardous Chemical Facilities

Manchester, Maps, West Oaks

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Houston Map of risk management plan facilities from UCS/tejas

The little and not-so-little red dots on the map above show off sites on the EPA’s list of plants and refineries required to have a Risk Management Plan due to their potential for accidental hazardous chemical releases — with the larger dots showing the places that have already had an accident (or, in some cases, as many as 43). Clicking each dot will tell you what the facility’s name is, as well as how much toxic or flammable material it stores on site (to the nearest thousand pounds or so).

The Union of Concerned Scientists and t.e.j.a.s. put together the interactive map as part of a report released late last week, which compares the EPA’s data on air quality and cancer rates in a few neighborhoods on the west side of town (specifically in Bellaire and in the West Oaks and Eldridge area, just inside Hwy.6 near the Barker reservoir) with the same data in a couple of east side spots (Galena Park and Manchester).

Sniffing It Out

Bellaire, Chemical Facilities, Galena Park, Industrial Accidents, Manchester, Maps, Pollution, Refineries, West Oaks

10/12/16 11:30am

AirBnB Marks the Houston Zip Codes Where They Think They Can Pay Your Rent

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AirBnB Mapping Tool Showing Nightly Income as Percentage of Average Area Rent

This patchy map of the Houston region, from the national tool released last week by Airbnb, shadesÂ the area’s zip codesÂ by what percentage ofÂ monthly rent could purportedly be coveredÂ byÂ a single night of Airbnb rental.Â The map is the DIY-hotel company’s submissionÂ to this spring’s federalÂ callÂ for moreÂ public data tools related toÂ housing and economics. And theÂ rental rates used for the comparisonÂ come from the so-called small area fair market rates set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which this summer proposed breaking up the flat city-wide rates currently used for Section 8 housing voucher payoutsÂ into smaller pieces (withÂ the intent that offering higher subsidy rates in higher incomeÂ areasÂ might reverse aÂ trend of concentrating housing voucher recipientsÂ into already-high-poverty neighborhoods).

Topping the company’s list in Houston is 77018, the quasi-trapezoid covering much of the Garden Oaks and Oak Forest area;Â the tool saysÂ theÂ federal marketÂ rental rateÂ for the zone is $830 per month, but that earnings for renting out a private roomÂ in the area via Airbnb average aroundÂ 22 percent of that amount, or $179 a night:

AirBnB R&D

AirBNB, Maps, Rentals, Section 8

10/04/16 5:00pm

A Quick Tour of Spots Where FEMA Will Expand Its Flood Hazard Zone In January

Flooding, Maps

7 Comments

Jan 2017 FEMA Special Flood Hazard Zone classification changes

The areas in red aboveÂ mark some ofÂ the new additions to the legally-gotta-buy-flood-insurance zones on FEMA’s recently revisedÂ flood maps. The agency’s interactive online viewerÂ lets you mix-and-matchÂ a few data setsÂ for HarrisÂ County (as well asÂ Galveston, Fort Bend, and Wharton), compare the old mapped flood zoneÂ boundaries to proposedÂ new ones, or look only at what would changeÂ —Â a FEMA spokesperson told Houston Public Media that about 8,000 properties have been added to the list in Harris County, while only aboutÂ 400 were dropped.

Those acid-green highlights are areas that have beenÂ removed from the specialÂ flood hazard zone by the updated mapÂ (whileÂ blue shows areas that have just changed floodplain classification some other way. Bits of brown and yellow in other areas of the map show placesÂ added or removed (respectively) from the floodway.Â TheÂ updates above to the mandatory flood insurance zone (legally called the Special Flood Hazard Area) are set to go into effect in January, as shown above.Â Buffalo Bayou and its tributaries are pretty marked up: