hazard reduction & recovery

To contend with the rapidly escalating threat of coastal flooding, government agencies need to adopt a new, fundamentally different strategy focused on flood prevention rather than recovery, according to a recent National Research Council report.

Age, income and race are primary factors effecting the vulnerability of populations in coastal regions to climate-related natural disasters, according to a recent study by researchers at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center.

A Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center team is investigating how recovery from a man-made disaster differs from a natural disaster as part of a National Science Foundation study focusing on the Texas towns of West and Granbury, which were hit, respectively, by a chemical plant explosion and a tornado.

A video touting how communities can avoid flood losses, available on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s website, features Sam Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M.

Two faculty members at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture have been recognized for outstanding research and teaching with 2014 Distinguished Achievement Awards from The Association of Former Students.

To mark 25 years of disaster-related research at Texas A&M University, many of the nation’s top hazard researchers are gathering on campus April 4-5 to present their latest work as part of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center’s “Planning for Disaster Resilience Symposium.”

Communities can improve their hurricane resilience by better protecting wetlands, diversifying their respective economies and building communication networks for socially vulnerable groups, said Sam Brody, Texas A&M professor of urban planning.

Planning professionals can learn the latest in hazard resilience measures from videos featuring presentations by hazard reduction and recovery experts from Texas A&M University. The online learning modules are offered by Planetizen, an information exchange urban planning website.

Philip Berke ‘81, widely regarded as one of the nation’s top land use planning scholars, is returning to Texas A&M in 2014 to rejoin the urban planning faculty and help lead the university’s Institute for Sustainable Coastal Communities.

Though natural and man-made disasters are inevitable, scientists at the Texas A&M College of Architecture are working on ways to minimize their impact, hasten recovery and gain valuable insight from the process.

The 100-year floodplain, a longstanding metric for determining the chance of an area’s inundation by flood waters, appears to be an inaccurate measure for predicting potential flood-related loss, said Samuel Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M.

Emergency management planners could reduce losses and strengthen community resilience by mapping socially vulnerable areas and focusing hazard mitigation efforts where they are most needed, said Shannon Van Zandt, a Texas A&M urban planning professor.

In the first large-scale study of its kind, Texas A&M researchers are investigating how storm forecast graphics, such as those depicting potential storm paths with cone-shaped regions of uncertainty, influence public decision making during hazard events.

"Inside the Megastorm," a recent episode of the PBS series, "NOVA," was supplemented by research on effective flood mitigation strategies conducted by Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center research fellows Sam Brody and Wesley Highfield.

Lower Rio Grande Valley officials will have help planning regional hurricane evacuations from a study undertaken by researchers at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center in collaboration with the university's Colonias Program.