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Flood Risk in Greater Houston

Versie 11/19/2013

Daniel Hogendoorn

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Warning

• No numbers• No graphs• Few slides• Some normativity here.

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Greater Houston/Galveston Bay

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Sources of Flooding

• Pluvial: torrential rain/runoff problems• Coastal: Hurricane surge.

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Hurricane Surge, Cities and Consequences

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Various local proposals

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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