• Houston’s anything-goes business model under siege after Harvey

    Last month, Harvey destroyed or damaged about 136,000 homes in Harris County. Now the city of Houston must determine whether to rebuild or repair, how to distribute billions of dollars in federal assistance, and whether or not the essence of America’s fourth-largest city will survive. The next storm could be even more destructive — but protection means rules, and rules go against the ethos of Houston.

  • Rethinking where/whether to rebuild after Hurricanes Irma, Harvey

    Though our natural instinct is to put everything back exactly where it was before a disaster, Mark Abkowitz, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies said people need to seriously rethink where and how to rebuild. “We’re talking hurricanes now, but it could be inland flooding, tornadoes, drought, wildfires, earthquakes. The question really comes up: If we had things the way they were and they suffered the level of catastrophic impact that they did, what’s the reasoning behind putting it back exactly the way it was before?” asks Abkowitz.

  • Houston's “flood czar” says Harvey has brought the city to a decision point on flood control

    In the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s record floods, the city of Houston is poised to receive billions — maybe even tens of billions — of recovery dollars in the coming years that may cover significant improvements to the city’s woefully inadequate drainage system as well as other projects to reduce flooding. Stephen Costello, Houston’s chief resilience officer, expects to play a big role in how Houston spends it Hurricane Harvey recovery dollars.

  • Escaping an unwelcome visit from mother nature

    Hurricane Irma forced mandatory evacuations throughout the Florida Keys. But with only two main north-south roads in and out of Florida - interstates 95 and 75 - Irma quickly became an exercise in preparedness for a storm described at times as “the size of the state of Ohio.” “Evacuation may not be the best goal in all cases. An alternative strategy to evacuating people to a far away destinations is to build more hurricane shelters near population centers,” says one expert.

  • FEMA flood maps missed 3-in-4 claims

    An analysis of flood claims in several southeast Houston suburbs from 1999 to 2009 found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year flood plain maps — the tool that U.S. officials use to determine both flood risk and insurance premiums — failed to capture 75 percent of flood damages from five serious floods, none of which reached the threshold of a 100-year event.

  • U.S. East Coast slowly sinks into the sea, faces more frequent flooding

    The East Coast of the United States is threatened by more frequent flooding in the future. The states of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are most at risk. Their coastal regions are being immersed by up to three millimeters per year – among other things, due to human intervention.

  • Designing a post-Harvey Houston for the future

    Being honest about the extent and urgency of the Houston-Galveston region’s flooding problem will not harm the community but will form the basis for recovery, according to a paper by an engineering and environmental expert. “Denying fundamental truths and moving forward with business as usual will be the economic death knell for the Houston region,” Rice University’s Jim Blackburn wrote in a paper highlighting fifteen policies and actions that are meant to initiate a conversation about designing a Houston for the future. “And make no mistake about it — how we respond to this horrible reality will determine the economic future of our region.”

  • What lessons will Houston-area officials learn from Harvey? History gives us a clue

    As Houston begins to recover from Harvey, a growing chorus of voices is calling for big policy changes to reduce flood damage from future disasters. Local officials haven’t said much about what they might pursue, but history offers some clues.

  • Are catastrophic disasters striking more often?

    Two major storms — Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma – in as many weeks raise this question: Is the number of major natural disasters striking the United States actually increasing, or does the media’s natural tendency to overhype conflict only make it seem so? Since 1980 there have been 212 disasters, which NOAA calculates resulted in over $1.2 trillion in damage. My analysis of the NOAA data shows that the number of billion-dollar disasters has indeed been increasing over time. A typical year in the 1980s experienced on average 2.7 such disasters in the U.S. In the 1990s and 2000s, that average had climbed to 4.6 and 5.4 a year, respectively. Since then, the frequency of costly disasters has soared. In this decade so far, each year has seen an average of 10.5 disasters. The scale of this increase amounts to one additional billion-dollar disaster every four years.

  • Water supply, quality in U.S. West affected by increased wildfire-caused erosion

    A growing number of wildfire-burned areas throughout the western United States are expected to increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, causing more sediment to be present in downstream rivers and reservoirs. The area burned annually by wildfires has increased in recent decades and is expected to continue to increase this century. Many growing cities and towns rely on water from rivers and reservoirs that originates in watersheds where wildfire and sedimentation are projected to increase. Increased sedimentation could negatively impact water supply and quality for some communities.

  • Hurricane Irma to cause significant erosion along U.S. east coast

    Large and powerful Hurricane Irma is likely to cause significant erosion along U.S. east coast beaches from Florida through South Carolina, according to a new projection from the U.S. Geological Survey. Strong waves and storm surge are likely to erode all sandy beaches in the three states, overtop sand dunes over three-quarters of the coast, and, in some areas, inundate areas behind the dunes. Water levels three to four meters, or 10 to 12 feet, above normal tide levels are likely for open coast shorelines along Florida’s Atlantic coast if Irma continues to track along the east coast.

  • Mexico quake amongst largest-ever intermediate-depth earthquakes

    An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico early Friday, killing dozens of people. “The 8.2-magnitude earthquake (the best current estimate) makes this among the largest intermediate-depth earthquakes ever recorded. I believe it is one of the 5 largest in the last 40 years,” says an earthquake expert.

  • 6 rules for rebuilding infrastructure in an era of “unprecedented” weather events

    Before Hurricane Harvey made landfall on 25 August, there was little doubt that its impact would be devastating and wide-ranging. Unfortunately, Harvey delivered and then some with early estimates of the damage at over $190 billion, which would make it the costliest storm in U.S. history. As the Houston region turns its attention to rebuilding and other cities consider ramping up efforts to make their infrastructure more resilient, it is the complicated story behind the devastation in Houston – a story involving decades of land use planning and poor urban design that has generated impervious surfaces at a fantastic pace – that can provide valuable lessons for policymakers, planners, engineers, developers and the public. These lessons are all the more important against the backdrop of a Trump administration that has stripped requirements for infrastructure projects to consider climate impacts and may try to offer an infrastructure investment package.

  • A year before Harvey, Houston-area flood control chief saw no "looming issues"

    Experts say the flooding in the Houston region could have wreaked far less havoc if local officials had made different decisions over the last several decades. But the former head of a key flood control agency strongly disagreed with that take in an interview last year.

  • North Korea threatens EMP attack on U.S.

    North Korea’s relentless march toward acquiring the capability to place a hydrogen bomb on top of an ICBM will soon pose a threat to all major U.S. cities. There is another threat that marrying of a hydrogen bomb to a powerful rocket poses: An EMP threat. The North Koreans could launch a missile into the upper atmosphere, then detonate a high-yield hydrogen bomb in space in order to generate an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, which would shut down the U.S. power grid and damage electrical devices. Experts testifying before the Congressional EMP Commission said that in the event of a massive EMP attack on the United States using multiple high-yield warheads, around 90 percent of the American population would be dead after eighteen months due to famine, disease, and societal breakdown.