Iowa Congressman Dave Loesback has reintroduced legislation to establish a National Flood Center. The primary purpose of the center would be to research flood-related issues, including prevention.
Loebsack says the U.S. currently doesn't do any comprehensive flood research.
"The idea is that it really is to take a comprehensive approach to flood control to test new methods and build on promising methods and techniques so we can better predict and prevent and recover from flooding."
He originally introduced the bill in 2008, and has changed it periodically. The congressman says what has changed the most since then is that people truly see why it's necessary.
"More than anything else we've seen the reasons why we need to have it, because of all the different weather events that we have seen around the United States in the past 10 years or so. I think that there's more justification to why we need to have a national center like this."
Loebsack worked with the University of Iowa's Flood Center, which is just a decade old, to draft the bill for the National Flood Research and Education Center.