Mitigating Severe Weather Impacts in Urban Areas

Rice University to host symposium April 15-17

The best methods for reducing the damage from floods will be presented at a national symposium at Rice University April 15-17. Titled "Mitigating Severe Weather Impacts in Urban Areas," the conference will feature experts from the National Weather Service, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Texas Medical Center, the University of Oklahoma, Rice and other institutions around the nation presenting recent advances in their specialties. A special session will focus on the effects of Topical Storm Allison, the most damaging urban flood in U.S. history.

"Communities vulnerable to natural hazards often have little control over severe weather impacts on infrastructure and energy- and water-supply systems," said Phil Bedient, the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering at Rice. "Our goal is to develop public and private partnerships to create a disaster-resilient community through improved planning, engineering design and technology. The conference should improve our understanding of how technology can help create better operations and designs for communities of the future."

The conference will begin with an afternoon of short courses on the use of radar rainfall in hydrology, hydrologic modeling software, and flood planning and emergency response, followed by two days of presentations and keynote addresses examining such topics as coastal flooding and subsidence, floodplain mapping, and insurance and risk management for severe storms.

Bedient expects the various presentations to be of interest to engineers, weather personnel, city planners, policy makers, developers and builders, insurance agents, floodplain managers, consultants and the general public.

Keynote addresses will be presented by Richard Wainerdi, Texas Medical Center, "Impact of Severe Weather on the Texas Medical Center and How To Mitigate that Impact"; John Snow, National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma, "Tomorrow's Weather Forecasts: Just in Time, on Time and Where They're Needed"; Wayne Huber, Oregon State University, "Urban Stormwater Modeling 2002"; and Art Story, Harris County Public Infrastructure, "Recovery and Lessons Learned from T.S. Allison."

The symposium, a follow-up to one held last year in Tulsa, Okla., is sponsored by Rice's Environmental and Energy Systems Institute and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Texas Medical Center, and the University of Oklahoma's International Center for Natural Hazards and Disaster Research.

Bedient, also a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice, is lead author of the textbook "Hydrology and Floodplain Analysis" and designer of a state-of-the-art Flood Alert System in the Texas Medical Center. He organized the conference with Baxter Vieux, professor of civil engineering and environmental science at the University of Oklahoma and director of the International Center for Natural Hazard and Disaster Research. He is an expert in the development of engineering hydrologic applications using NEXRAD radar, the world's foremost weather radar system.

Bedient and Vieux will teach a short course and also make presentations during the symposium.

Registration fees are $350 for the symposium and $50 for the three short courses.
The schedule of speakers and application forms are available online at http://www.rice.edu/flood or http://nhdr.ou.edu/.
Questions should be directed to Bedient at 713-348-4953 or [email protected].

News media who want to attend any of the sessions should contact Jade Boyd in Rice's Office of News and Media Relations at 713-348-6778 or [email protected].