Flood Risk in Greater Houston
-
Upload
sigourney-sandoval -
Category
Documents
-
view
32 -
download
3
description
Transcript of Flood Risk in Greater Houston
1Challenge the future
Flood Risk in Greater Houston
Versie 11/19/2013
Daniel Hogendoorn
2Challenge the future
Warning
• No numbers• No graphs• Few slides• Some normativity here.
3Challenge the future
Greater Houston/Galveston Bay
4Challenge the future
Sources of Flooding
• Pluvial: torrential rain/runoff problems• Coastal: Hurricane surge.
5Challenge the future
6Challenge the future
Hurricane Surge, Cities and Consequences
7Challenge the future
Various local proposals
8Challenge the future
High risk, proposals, no action
• Why not? It’s not technical (“political suicide”) • Assumption: dominant political values, entrenched in
institutions, regulations, policies/private organized efforts• Texas has remarkable stability of classical liberal values;
difficult to change constitution; minimal legislative activity (and on all the wrong topics.)
• If so, do policies of flood risk cohere with political values?• If so, how do these constraints influence framing of plans
+ substance of expertise + strategies for seeking political support
9Challenge the future
Existing Policies
• Mapping the private and public actors of flood risk management (Pluvial and Coastal).
• Big, unsystematic diversity of policies and practices, with limited geographical coverage, limited effects on flood risk reduction.
• Many levels of governance, e.g. Federal (USACE; FEMA), State (GLO), Counties (HCFC), Cities (Emergency management), unincorporated regions and municipali utility districts, Ship Channel (industries, Port of Houston Coast guard);
• NGO’s and private efforts: TMC; debris-removal; flood insurance; Red Cross.
10Challenge the future
Exposure + Flood Events
• Sorted into five categories, constructed for different effect on risk exposure:
• - information provision: self-coordination to lower exposure• - Evacuation: (steered) coordination to lower human
exposure.• - Spatial Adaptation: lowering exposure through physical
modification (regulation-driven)• - Flood control interventions: lowering exposure through
control of flood-event• - Recovery and Repression: exposure + Flood events intact,
focussed on minimizing damage/back to normal/resiliency
11Challenge the future
Partners• TU Delft
• Faculty of Civil Engineering• Faculty of Architecture• Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management• STW-funding Multifunctional Flood Defences
• Texas A&M Galveston• Rice University, University of Houston (SSPEED-
centre)• IV Infra; RHDHV; Dannenbaum
12Challenge the future
Ongoing fieldwork
• Following the parties involved, including Dutch universities and policy-makers.
• The goal is to see how implementation happens or fails to happen in response to policy and regulation practices