Our goal is to address a critical need to improve monitoring and forecasting of storm-induced coastal flooding (i.e., storm surge). The fundamental element of our approach is a new class of smart drifter—low-cost, rapidly deployable sensors used to collect surge information in advance of, during, and following significant weather events. These devices, each a bit larger than a tennis ball, will be deployed in advance of oncoming storms. The devices will log surge information used for post processing. In this paper, we present the Phase I of the project: the design and development of the smart drifter.