Via Asheville Citizen-Times [Update: Broken Link-Story no longer on web site].

“We know the weather is going to continue to happen,” said Jim Fox of the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center at UNC Asheville and a member of the task force. “With our mountain topography, we’re going to have floods. No doubt about it,” Fox said.

“Then combine that fact with the big population growth we’re seeing,” he said. “Buncombe County is going to be adding 30,000 people in the next 20 years. Where are they all going to live?”

At the analysis center, along with the Renaissance Computing Institute at UNCA engagement site, researchers have been putting together 3-D visualizations of the Swannanoa River, reliving in animation the flooding that occurred in 2004 when Biltmore Village was swamped.

RENCI is a university initiative set up by the state to develop tools to tackle the state’s environmental problems. UNCA and the Asheville area were chosen as a lab site to create models and visualization tools to access flooding in the mountains.

Down the road, officials could use the tools to help predict how development of more buildings and parking lots in vulnerable floodplains or along steep mountain slopes could either add to the damages or lessen the inevitable blow.

The city has stacks of flood-planning documents but few people can grasp the details, according to David McConville, a digital artist.

With scientific visualizations that allow laypeople to see animated scenarios of rainfalls flooding down the Swannanoa river basin and rising through the streets of Biltmore Village, residents and elected leaders can better appreciate what happened in 2004.

These displays aren’t just for historic special effects, McConville said. New data could be fed into the simulations to provide more information as development continues.

Click here [update:broken link] for animation of Biltmore Village 100-year flood plain.

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