Rice U. experts available during 2016 hurricane season

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jade Boyd
713-348-6778
jadeboyd@rice.edu

Rice U. experts available during 2016 hurricane season

HOUSTON — (May 24, 2016) — The 2016 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1, and Rice University will have experts available for media interviews about storms that enter the Gulf of Mexico.

Rice’s 2016 hurricane experts, by topic area, include:

Hurricane and flooding risks and impact

Phil Bedient, Rice’s Herman Brown Professor of Engineering, director of the SSPEED Center and designer of the Flood Alert System 3, can discuss flooding issues that arise from tropical depressions, hurricanes and other severe storms. In his 2012 book, “Lessons from Hurricane Ike,” Bedient and more than 20 other researchers gave a 194-page account of what they learned from studying the 2008 storm that caused nearly $25 billion in damages and killed dozens.

Bedient created the first Flood Alert System for Rice and the Texas Medical Center (TMC) in 1997; the third generation of the system, FAS3, debuted in 2010. FAS3 uses radar rainfall data, rain gauge information, bayou stage data and hydrologic modeling to accurately predict the out-of-bank flooding of Brays Bayou in the TMC. FAS3 uses Google Maps and issues flood warnings and forecasts that allow TMC managers to begin preparations as much as an hour before flooding first occurs.

Jim Blackburn is co-director of Rice’s SSPEED Center, director of Rice’s undergraduate minor in energy and water sustainability, a professor in the practice of environmental law in Rice’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a practicing environmental attorney and owner of a planning firm called Sustainable Planning and Design. He can speak about the impact that widespread property development has had on storm and flood risks in the Houston-Galveston region, and he can address the local, state and federal regulatory measures that were enacted to mitigate those risks. Blackburn also can address the environmental and economic sustainability of regional hurricane protection proposals, including structural options for dikes, levees and gates in and around Galveston Bay and nonstructural alternatives that aim to use coastal wetlands and prairies as natural, protective storm barriers.

John Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and professor of Earth science, academic director of Rice’s Shell Center for Sustainability and author of the book “The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast,” can explain how hurricanes have impacted and helped shape the modern coastlines of Texas, Louisiana, Florida and other Gulf Coast states.

Environmental and economic impact

Jamie Padgett, associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, has assessed dozens of bridges and hundreds of petrochemical storage tanks in the Houston-Galveston area to determine which are most vulnerable to failure during a hurricane. Padgett can describe how bridges and storage tanks commonly fail due to storm-surge flooding, and she can discuss methods that engineers are developing to design more durable structures and to retrofit older facilities to withstand storm damage.

Pedro Alvarez, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the National Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT Center), can discuss the environmental impact and the cleanup efforts that communities can face when large hurricanes strike and the emergency water supply.

Energy industry

Terry Hemeyer, adjunct professor in Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business and a crisis communications expert, can discuss the ongoing communications challenges and public relations strategies that government agencies and corporations face in times of disaster.

Ken Medlock, director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, can address what can happen to gasoline prices around the country when refining and pipeline infrastructure is negatively affected for an extended time.

Satish Nagarajaiah, professor of civil and environmental engineering, can speak about the threats hurricanes pose to offshore drilling platforms. With funding from both industry and the Department of Energy, his research group has explored new techniques for actively monitoring the structural integrity of deep-water platforms and risers. The algorithms and techniques from his group allow managers to estimate fatigue damage and plan for maintenance before costly, dangerous failures can occur.

Tom Kolditz, director of Rice University’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders, can discuss crisis leadership strategies with examples taken from hurricanes Katrina and Sandy; he uses the two events in his presentations, and they are included in his book, “In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It.” Kolditz is in the midst of developing the most comprehensive leader development initiative at any top 20 university. Professional coaches certified by the International Coach Federation (ICF) worked with more than 250 Rice students to design individualized leadership-development programs this spring. This fall, all Rice sophomores will be offered professional leader development with certified coaches; this will transform the character of an already exceptional Rice education so that it includes leader development for all students.

Politics

Bob Stein, professor of political science, can talk about local government reaction to a storm and the politics that are in play. He also can speak about the city of Houston’s Storm Risk Calculator, which he helped develop at Rice.

Mark Jones, professor of political science and fellow in political science at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, can discuss government reaction to a storm and the politics that are in play.

National Hurricane Center storm names for the 2016 Atlantic storms:

• Alex — Formed Jan. 13 near the Bahamas to become the first Atlantic hurricane in January since 1955’s Alice. Made landfall in the Azores before wandering north into the Labrador Sea.

• Bonnie
• Colin
• Danielle
• Earl
• Fiona
• Gaston
• Hermine
• Ian
• Julia
• Karl
• Lisa
• Matthew
• Nicole
• Otto
• Paula
• Richard
• Shary
• Tobias
• Virginie
• Walter

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