(Radio Iowa) – Well over 450 Spencer residents have downloaded a new smart phone app designed to provide a variety of information — including weather alerts. Spencer City Manager Kevin Robinson says it’s part of the ongoing response to the historic flooding that hit Spencer in mid-2024. “One of the takeaways after the flood was people were relying on the messaging from the local government as a definitive direction of what to do,” he says. “For example, how much risk are we exactly in at what particular time? When should we, if we should leave our home?” Spencer sits at the convergence of the Little Sioux and Ocheyedan Rivers. The smart phone app uses data from the Flood Center of Iowa and provides notifications when river levels rise.

“The Flood Center has stream gauges all throughout Iowa and they update information every 15 minutes and then they feed that information into their flood models,” Robinson says. “We wrote the application on the Android and Apple phones so that the Iowa Flood Center information could flow into their phones.” That data is also used for a new three-tiered flood warning system Spencer has developed — and which is also shown on the app. Spencer hired retired Clive Fire Chief Rick Rowe to assess how the city handled the flooding and plan for how to handle future disasters. Rowe concluded the public wanted simple to understand warnings and he helped guide development of the app. Robinson says push notifications are built into the app.

“When we had a snow emergency come up here the last month or so, we were able to push messages out to people. When the derecho came we were able to warn about the weather — and then the app also isn’t just weather,” Robinson says. “It’s essentially an application version in the palm of your hand of our website.” The app is free to download in the Apple Store or Google Play Store. The city pays a small per download fee to the developer and Robinson predicts the company will start offering to build similar apps for other cities in the next few months.