Using Water Surface Elevation (WSEL) Grid in GIS

This video serves as an introduction to the FEMA Flood Risk Product called Water Surface Elevation (WSEL) Grids and a tutorial which outlines steps in ArcMap to perform simple spatial analysis using the raster dataset.

[@ArthurMorganFTW_RDR]

Thank you so much Miss. Your videos really helped me prepare for my GIS analyst role for our company's water resource team. Stay blessed. Thank you once again!!!

[@lumartinsgeo]

I'm doing a project where we're trying to determine how many more buildings would be flooded if the floodplain were to rise between 2 and 5 feet. I have a polygonal floodplain, but am having trouble calculating how much more area will be flooded by the elevations that I described above. I want to outline a polygon 2 feet above another polygon using as reference z dem using arcgis/qgis. I would like to know if you could help me or tell me some tool that I can use to achieve it?

[@coloradohazardandriskmappi7943]

Hi Luciano. With the Water Surface Elevation Grids, you can always use raster calculator tools and perform an addition process so that "original WSEL + extra depth or rise" is computed, to obtain an output WSEL that has the higher water elevations. Once you have the desired WSEL grid, you can convert to a polygon vector layer or go the other route and convert your polygon floodplain layer to raster to compare "apples to apples" if you will, and be able to intersect z values to each other. Does this help? If you'd like to discuss in more detail, I'd be happy to jump on a quick phone call with you or continue messaging via email. My email is [e-mail].