10 Tampa Bay: New tech to help Manatee County respond faster during severe weather

With the threat of flooding this week, Manatee County is looking to charts and maps in real-time on a dashboard Peregrine created and launched last year, just before Hurricane Helene.

It used to be a time-consuming and error-prone chore to keep tabs on all lift stations and rain gauges during a severe weather event, 10 Tampa Bay reports. Now, the process is streamlined in a major way in Manatee County, and other jurisdictions are following suit.

"We are constantly getting updated, the forecast is constantly changing,” Manatee County Director of Public Safety Jodie Fiske told 10 Tampa Bay, pointing to four panels of flatscreen TVs. “You can see our river and stream gauges, the title gauges up there.”

The county is working actively with Peregrine to launch yet another dashboard soon that will display flooding reports from 911 calls screened and transcribed by AI, saving time when minutes count. Read more on 10 Tampa Bay's website.