Abstract
Abstract. Since the catastrophic flooding of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city's hurricane protection system has been improved to provide protection against a hurricane load with a 1/100 per year exceedance frequency. This paper investigates the risk to life in post-Katrina New Orleans. In a flood risk analysis the probabilities and consequences of various flood scenarios have been analyzed for the central area of the city (the metro bowl) to give a preliminary estimate of the risk to life in the post-Katrina situation. A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model has been used to simulate flood characteristics of various breaches. The model for estimation of fatality rates is based on the loss of life data for Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that – depending on the flood scenario – the estimated loss of life in case of flooding ranges from about 100 to nearly 500, with the highest life loss due to breaching of the river levees leading to large flood depths. The probability and consequence estimates are combined to determine the individual risk and societal risk for New Orleans. When compared to risks of other large-scale engineering systems (e.g., other flood prone areas, dams and the nuclear sector) and acceptable risk criteria found in literature, the risks for the metro bowl are found to be relatively high. Thus, despite major improvements to the flood protection system, the flood risk to life of post-Katrina New Orleans is still expected to be significant. Indicative effects of reduction strategies on the risk level are discussed as a basis for further evaluation and discussion.
Highlights
Hurricane Katrina struck the southern Gulf Coast of the US on 29 August 2005
The catastrophic loss of life experienced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and flood events in other parts of the world emphasizes that risk to life is an important aspect of flood risk management strategies
Where IR(x, y) is the individual risk at location (x, y), Pi is the probability of occurrence of flood scenario i, FD|i(x, y) is the mortality FD at location (x, y) given flood scenario i (–) and FE is the evacuated fraction of the initial population (–)
Summary
Hurricane Katrina struck the southern Gulf Coast of the US on 29 August 2005. The surge caused by the storm overwhelmed the existing flood protection of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, leading to one of the worst natural disasters in American history. The catastrophic loss of life experienced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and flood events in other parts of the world emphasizes that risk to life is an important aspect of flood risk management strategies. To gain more insight into risk to life during floods, this study estimates and evaluates the risk to life for New Orleans with the upgraded protection system. This work adds to existing flood risk studies for New Orleans (IPET, 2009b; Jonkman et al, 2009a). The IPET effort included a detailed reliability analysis of the upgraded protection system and results include economic and life loss consequence estimates for various event frequencies. The risk to life of the upgraded protection system is evaluated in this study by comparing results to acceptable safety standards found in literature and applied in other engineering sectors.
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