Abstract
Abstract Following Hurricane Katrina, the US Army Corps of Engineers, supported in part by the risk and reliability analysis conducted by the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET), made a major shift from ‘protection’ to ‘risk reduction’ as the principal goal in flood mitigation. The mitigation of the flood risk in Southeast Louisiana was embodied in the design and construction of the ‘Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System’, the post-Katrina initiative for New Orleans flood mitigation. It also spawned a major overhaul of many of the Corps of Engineers’ technical guidance and engineering practice documents, incorporating risk as a key measure in the planning and design processes. The criteria applied for the design of the HSDRRS are discussed, with summaries of the associated major changes in Corps engineering guidance and practice relevant to flood mitigation.
Highlights
This discussion has highlighted what has been an all-to-often path to a major change in addressing national water management issues and flooding
It takes a disaster or two to stimulate change and when change is achieved, it takes an excruciatingly long time to spread that change from the realm of policy to practice and an even longer period of time to implement the change on the ground nationwide
While change is relatively easy to accomplish in terms of new construction and for reconstruction after a disaster, it is a virtual conundrum for those areas that are living with unacceptable risks but have done nothing to mitigate that risk
Summary
The losses from Hurricane Katrina and subsequent forensic and risk analyses for New Orleans resulted in substantial changes to the knowledge base and guidance for planning and designing coastal flood risk reduction systems. The Corps of Engineers had accepted risk as an important measure in the 1990s, as evidenced by the development of policy and guidance documents addressing risk use for Corps analyses such as ‘Guidelines for Risk and Uncertainty Analysis in Water Resources Planning, Volume I, Principles’, (IWR Report 92-R-1, March 1992), Engineer Regulation ER 1110-2-1150, Engineering and Design for Civil Works Projects, August 1999, and EM 1110-2-1619, Risk-Based Analysis for Flood Damage Reduction Studies, 1996 While these became part of the Corps governance policy documents, risk-based analysis and management did not rise to prominence until after the Katrina event. USACE dam safety program The USACE operates and maintains approximately 700 dams nationwide and in Puerto Rico that provide significant, multiple benefits to the nation – its people, businesses, critical infrastructure, and the environment These benefits include flood risk management, navigation, water supply, hydropower, environmental stewardship, fish and wildlife conservation, and recreation. Our dam safety professionals carry out a dam safety program to make sure these projects deliver their intended benefits while reducing risks to people, property, and the environment through continuous assessment, communication, and management. (By comparison, there are more than 87,000 dams in the National Inventory of Dams that are federally, state, locally, and privately operated and maintained.)
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