RIVERDALE, IOWA (February 19, 2025) — The next meeting of the Quad Cities Flood Resiliency Alliance will be held on Thursday, February 20, 2025, 3PM, in the City Hall Community Room in Riverdale, Iowa. The Alliance is open to the public and is a forum for timely and educational information on flood prevention, mitigation, flood insurance, and floodplain management. The agenda for the February 20 meeting includes:
Presentation by Kate Giannini, Program Manager, Iowa Flood Center, “Collaborative Flood Resilience: Community-Driven Solutions to Flood Challenges” Q&A following.
Kate Giannini Bio:
Kate Giannini coordinates outreach, communication, and research activities for the Iowa Flood Center at IIHR — Hydroscience and Engineering, University of Iowa. She serves as a vital link between IIHR researchers, and external stakeholders, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange.
With nearly two decades of experience in conservation and natural resource management, Kate is deeply committed to protecting and restoring our environment—from agricultural landscapes to urban ecosystems. Her expertise lies in watershed management, water quality protection, flood mitigation, and habitat restoration.
Beyond technical work, Kate has led and facilitated partnerships across public agencies, NGOs, and private entities to drive meaningful conservation efforts. She believes that through collaboration, we can create resilient ecosystems and sustainable solutions for the future.
Iowa Flood Center Bio:
The Iowa Flood Center is part of the University of Iowa College of Engineering and is the nation’s only academic-research center devoted solely to flooding. The IFC develops innovative tools and reliable information that decision-makers, emergency responders, community leaders, home and business owners, educators, and the public depend on to help them understand and reduce their flood risks and make better flood-related decisions.
The center’s work is accessible to everyone through the online Iowa Flood Information System which communicates real-time information about stream levels, flood alerts and forecasts, and hydrologic conditions for the entire state.
About the Alliance: At River Action’s October 2018 Upper Mississippi River Conference, a workshop launched a new initiative for the greater Quad City region within the Mississippi River watershed. The Quad Cities Flood Resiliency Alliance kicked off with many local river cities, towns, and villages showing a keen interest in flood prevention, flood damage-mitigation, and floodplain restoration. Quarterly meetings followed, starting in November 2018.
The Quad Cities alliance includes parts of Scott, Clinton, Muscatine, and Louisa counties in Iowa, and Rock Island, Whiteside, Mercer, and Henry counties in Illinois. It provides a forum for river stakeholders to share information, resources, flood prevention or mitigation policies, and to get to know river neighbors for assistance before, during or after flood events.
About 75 communities comprise the alliance footprint, but out of the Quad City communities, only three are currently enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System.
The CRS encourages a wide variety of creditable activities that communities can undertake as they continually strive to improve their ratings. The base rating begins at ten, and a variety of activities take the rating toward the best rating of one, which earns the largest flood-insurance discounts.
The activities themselves provide benefits to the community in reduced or avoided flood damage, quicker recovery, and stricter floodplain regulations to continue these benefits into the future. Moline, Davenport and Rock Island County are rated eight, seven, and seven, respectively and currently earn modest discounts on flood insurance premiums.
Goals of the alliance include educating communities on the CRS program and assisting with application and enrollment, training certified floodplain managers to eventually have one in each community, and establishing pre-disaster communications and relationships between communities to enable sharing of resources and assistance around flood events.
Meetings are held quarterly. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, contact River Action at 563-322-2969 or e-mail kwine@riveraction.org.
