Drainage investments should be paired with flood modeling that is well documented prior to implementation, making clear the method and the data required to update the model. The evaluation was unable to quantitatively assess the drainage investments’ effectiveness at reducing flooding because government data on flooding did not exist and the project had not recorded baselines or targets for flooding or other parameters that affect flooding. A flood model like hec-res used to inform the design of the drains would have established some baseline parameters and assumptions for future drainage performance that could have been validated by the evaluation to model flood reductions. Future programming should ensure flood models are well documented prior to compact implementation, so models can be replicated and updated to evaluate the investment’s efficacy.
Lesson Learned