Flood-Inundation Map Products, Travel Time Estimates, Geospatial Information, and Hydraulic Models of the Blue River and Major Tributaries, in and near Kansas City, Missouri, 2023-25

Digital flood-inundation maps for 35.5-miles of the Blue River, in and near Kansas City, Missouri, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the City of Kansas City, Missouri. Maps also were developed for a combined 7.3 miles of Brush Creek (4.4 miles) and Indian Creek (2.9 miles), two primary tributaries to the Blue River in the study reach. The flood-inundation maps depict estimates of the areal extent and depth of flooding, depth of water above first-floor elevations in selected buildings, water velocity, water-surface elevations, and time-of-travel corresponding to selected water levels or gage heights (hereafter referred to as “stages”) at eight reference USGS streamgages—five on the Blue River (USGS station numbers 06893590, 06893578, 06893500, 06893150, and 06893100), two on Brush Creek (USGS station numbers 06893562 and 06893557) and one on Indian Creek (USGS station number 06893390). Flood profiles were computed by means of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System (HEC-RAS; USACE, 2024) two-dimensional hydraulic models. The models were calibrated by using the USGS developed stage-discharge relations at each reference streamgage and used to compute water-surface profiles for flood stages at 1-foot intervals referenced to the streamgage vertical datums (datums referenced to North American Vertical Datum of 1988). The simulated water-surface profiles were combined with a digital elevation model derived from light detection and ranging data to delineate the area flooded at each water level. There are four .7z files in this data release, one for map reaches BR1 and BR2, one for reaches BR3 and IC1, one for map reaches BR4 and BR5, and one for map reaches BC1 and BC2. Each .7z file contains the hydraulic model run files, calibration metrics of the model(s) used in the development of flood-inundation maps, and geospatial files--flood-inundation polygons, depth grids, water-velocity grids, and water-surface elevation grids. In addition, the data release contains .7z files of estimates of first-floor elevations of primary structures in the inundation extent and tabulated time-of-travel estimates between the reference streamgages.

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