AEM is pleased to announce Baylor University and the Raleigh, North Carolina Stormwater Engineering Division as winners of the inaugural Elements of Excellence Awards for innovative leadership in the field of weather resilience. Both winners earned recognition by setting an exemplary standard for weather risk management and timely alerting systems that actively keep people and infrastructure safe in the communities they serve.
Moving forward, we’ll explore…
- The values and mission behind the Elements of Excellence Awards
- Why Baylor University is America’s most lightning-ready campus
- How Raleigh, NC is setting the standard for urban flood readiness
- How you can help recognize resilience leaders in your community
Introducing the AEM Elements of Excellence Awards
As we continue our mission to be the world’s essential source for environmental insights, AEM is launching the Elements of Excellence Awards to highlight the work of resilience-minded leaders and innovative teams around the world who are doing their part to protect communities in the face of escalating risks.
Mastering the natural hazard event cycle is one of the key challenges of our time. That’s why it’s so important to shine a light on resilience leaders, recognize them as the heroes they truly are, and see if we can uncover what others can learn from their approaches.
Finalists for the Elements of Excellence Award were selected from a nomination list gathered from AEM employees, and winners were chosen based on a variety of factors, including the size of the community they support, the capabilities of their monitoring and alerting systems, and the ease that others would have replicating their approach.
Each winner receives a certificate of recognition and digital badge that they can display to showcase their achievement, and a charitable contribution will be made to The Nature Conservancy in recognition of their achievement.
Baylor University: America’s most lightning-ready campus
Baylor University is located on a thousand-acre campus in Waco, Texas—an area that sees more than its fair share of lightning. With a community of more than 20,000 students and 3,000 additional staff and faculty members, Director of Emergency Management George Nuñez and his team have plenty of people to keep safe.
That’s why Baylor has created a storm awareness and lightning alerting solution that’s setting the standard for universities across the U.S. and world. The Emergency Management team tracks severe storms as they approach campus to enable proper preparation and communication in the hours leading up to a storm event. As the storm nears, their on-campus weather stations help them gather real-time weather information for the campus itself, so they can compare what they’re seeing against forecasts and conditions in other nearby areas.
When dangerous thunderstorms and lightning strikes reach campus, Baylor’s network of lightning sirens activates to tell people moving around the campus to seek shelter. Best of all, the entire alerting process is automated, so George’s team doesn’t have to agonize over exactly when to start the sirens, and there’s no delay in getting timely warnings to people who might be at risk.
Since adopting this system, they’ve had zero lightning-related injuries. Congratulations to George, the Department of Emergency Management, and the entire team at Baylor University for their commitment to lightning safety and for creating a blueprint for success that other schools can follow.
Raleigh Stormwater Engineering: Innovating urban FEWS
Raleigh is the capital of North Carolina and one of the three corners of the state’s Research Triangle. It’s also a city with above-average flood risk, as two large creeks with a network of tributaries flow across the city and tropical storms can still bring heavy rainfall, even though Raleigh is over 100 miles inland.
The Raleigh Stormwater Engineering Division is tasked with managing the city’s Flood Early Warning System (FEWS), which is designed to keep a population of more than 480,000 notified in the event of a dangerous storm.
Back in 2018, part of Raleigh was inundated with an unexpected flood that went undetected by their existing rain gauges. The city’s Stormwater Management Division pledged that kind of event would not go undetected again. That led to the Engineering Division, under the direction of Kelly Daniels, making several strategic additions to the FEWS to improve situational awareness and close visibility gaps.
By using radar rainfall estimations in addition to their rain gauge network, they’re now able to understand where heavy rain or flood conditions could be developing between gauges. They’ve also updated their inundation modeling, which means they have a more accurate understanding of where water is going in real time once it hits the ground, and they have the ability to run storm simulations for training and infrastructure planning.
Thanks to the work of the Engineering Division, Raleigh now has rainfall awareness and flood risk management capabilities that any city would be proud of. The city’s truly innovative early warning system extends their ability to recognize potential flood risks before they develop and lead decisively during a major storm to deliver for their citizens.
Congratulations to the Elements of Excellence Award winners!
The work of everyday resilience leaders like Baylor’s George Nuñez and Raleigh’s Kelly Davis is foundational to keeping communities safe and thriving in the face of increasingly severe and unpredictable environmental events. It’s only because of their efforts that the rest of us are able to go about our daily lives with assurance that someone’s looking after the bigger picture for us.
At AEM, our hats are off to George, Kelly, and both their teams of safety and engineering professionals. Congratulations on your well-deserved Elements of Excellence Awards! We hope your peers will draw inspiration from what you’ve achieved.
We’re searching for more excellent resilience leaders
Do you know someone who’s doing note-, praise-, or recognition-worthy work in the field of weather resilience? Our team at AEM wants to know about it!
You can contact us to share a story about someone in your community who’s working to improve weather awareness, situational readiness, or response capabilities—or who’s just really great at being a voice for resilience in your community. Maybe your submission will wind up being a finalist for the next round of awards!