Texas Gov. Rick Perry has signed legislation creating Texas' first research center to focus exclusively on predicting and planning for disasters caused by hurricanes and tropical storms. Legislation creating the new center -- the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster Center, or SSPEED -- was sponsored by Rep. Dennis Bonnen and Sen. Kyle Janek and unanimously passed both houses of the Texas Legislature this spring.
The SSPEED Center, which is housed in Houston and based at Rice University, will organize leading universities, researchers, emergency managers and private and public entities to better address severe storm impacts from Texas to Louisiana in a zone that includes major cities like New Orleans, Houston, Baton Rouge, Galveston and Brownsville.
"Our primary goal is to improve lead-time and accuracy of storm predictions and to deliver information in real time to emergency managers for improved evacuations and sheltering in place," said center director Phil Bedient, the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering at Rice and one of the nation's foremost experts on urban flooding.
The center is an academic and public partnership. Inaugural members include seven leading Texas universities, the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, and Southeast Texas' largest council of local governments, the Houston-Galveston Area Council.
"The SSPEED Center will put Houston on the map as far as hurricanes and severe storm research are concerned, as well as focus attention on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast to hopefully attract the resources that will be necessary to better prepare for flooding and hurricanes," said center co-director Hanadi Rifai, associate professor of environmental engineering at the University of Houston.
The center's research areas include:
- severe storm and hurricane research and storm surge prediction
- radar-based rainfall and flood warning systems for urban and coastal areas
- state-of-the-art educational programs for workforce training and public awareness
- infrastructure risk assessment for sheltering and evacuation from disaster
- evacuation plans linked to the best warning and transportation systems, and societal needs.
"The 2005 hurricane season clearly demonstrated the extreme and dire deficiencies that exist in storm prediction, disaster planning, and evacuation in the Gulf Coast region," said Bill King, who in 2005-2006 served on the Governor's Task Force on Evacuation, Transportation and Logistics. "SSPEED is the first center that will address severe storm prediction and impacts in the Gulf Coast Area, and it is well-positioned to respond to the focus areas identified by the Governor's task force."
Bedient said the center plans to develop computer software capable of mapping flood inundation zones in real time using radar rainfall data. The system will also evaluate hurricane storm surges in real time, and it will link to evacuation scenarios and search-and-rescue operations that will contribute invaluable information for emergency managers. The center also plans to quantify infrastructure risks to allow emergency planners to prevent major failures from critical facility flooding and other shortages. Finally, the center's proposed education and outreach plan is directly aimed at increasing public awareness.
"Bringing together severe storm and real-time flood warnings with evacuation plans and efficient communication can improve the well-being of coastal communities faced with severe storms and natural disasters," Bedient said. "This is a key concept for our center, and it can only be accomplished through an academic, public and private partnership."
The SSPEED Center's expertise will be applied as follows:
- Rice University -- flood prediction and warning; urban hydrologic models; Web integration of real-time data; regional forecast testbed; public policy and response
- University of Houston -- educational outreach for public and high schools; infrastructure risk assessment
- Louisiana State University -- storm surge model prediction; evacuation and transportation planning
- University of Texas-Austin -- disaster planning; storm surge modeling; remotely sensed data; evacuation and transportation systems
- Texas A&M and TAMU-Galveston -- coastal flood evacuation; storm surge impacts; community response, land planning in the coastal zone
- Texas Southern University -- transportation systems and evacuation planning
- University of Texas-Brownsville -- coastal flood response; regional forecast testbed; international border issues
- Houston-Galveston Area Council -- evacuation planning and transportation management; lead governmental unit for operations and response
