Oviedo weighs $216,000 flood forecasting tool before storm season

Oviedo weighed a $216,018.56 flood forecasting system Monday night as city leaders debated whether better warning maps would justify the cost before the next major storm.

The proposal would pay for software and engineering tied to FloodWise, a real-time platform from Winter Springs-based Streamline Technologies. The system is built to watch designated flood-risk points, including road intersections, homes and critical infrastructure, and to predict whether those locations will flood in real time and as much as three to four days ahead. On its dashboard, orange marks warning conditions and red signals a higher alert threshold.

The proposed coverage area would stretch across about 9.3 square miles in the Big and Little Econlockhatchee River watersheds. The city’s stormwater materials also tie local flood information to Lake Jessup, the Little Econlockhatchee River, the Econlockhatchee River and Lake Howell.

Mayor Megan Sladek pushed the item out of the consent agenda so it could be discussed on its own and questioned whether the city should make the investment. Sladek said the Econ River and Sweetwater Creek carry large volumes of water toward Lake Jesup, leaving little room for drainage when storms intensify. Oviedo had already adopted the Seminole County and municipalities 2025-2030 Floodplain Management Plan on Dec. 15, 2025.

After Hurricane Ian in September 2022, Oviedo and nearby Seminole County neighborhoods near the Econlockhatchee rivers saw major flooding, and county officials opened sandbag operations in Oviedo during the response. The U.S. Geological Survey maintains a real-time monitoring site for the Econlockhatchee River near Oviedo.

FloodWise uses rainfall, surge and hydrologic modeling to forecast where flooding will occur, how long it will last and how widespread it may be. In Streamline’s Orange County case study, a similar FloodWise system identified flooding hotspots in Orlo Vista three days before Hurricane Ian’s flooding hit there, giving officials more time to prepare evacuation notices. In Oviedo, Ardurra Group would handle the engineering and technical work with Streamline serving as a subconsultant, and the project could take about 18 months after notice to proceed.