Default | NEWS

9/3/2009

Rice hosts 'Hurricane Ike: Revisited' Sept. 14
Experts discuss storm's lessons on anniversary of disaster

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

The Rice-based center for Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) will host a symposium titled "Hurricane Ike: Revisited" Sept. 14. The one-day event will feature experts and community leaders, including Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, discussing the lessons learned from Ike, which made landfall Sept. 13, 2008.

	NASA

The symposium will feature technical talks and updates on efforts by SSPEED researchers. Speakers will discuss programs and policies that have been put into place since Ike, the latest updates on recovery and renewal efforts from Ike, and efforts to better predict the impact of future storm winds, storm surge and rainfall-induced flooding on the Houston area.

Speakers will include SSPEED Director Phil Bedient, Rice's Herman Brown Professor of Engineering; Jim Blackburn, professor in the practice of environmental law and co-principal investigator with Bedient on a Houston Endowment grant to study Ike; and KHOU-TV meteorologist Gene Norman. The conference will also feature experts from the National Weather Service, the University of Houston, the Harris County Office of Emergency Management, Texas Southern University, Harris County Flood Control, the University of Texas at Austin, the Environmental Defense Fund, Texas A&M University and more.

The $1.25 million grant to SSPEED by Houston Endowment in June is funding a two-year evaluation of the impacts of Hurricane Ike and the steps that should be taken at the local, state and national levels to mitigate damage from future hurricanes. The latest research findings from this ongoing and extensive project will be shared at the conference.

The meeting is free for Rice faculty, staff and students, but participants are asked to both preregister online at the conference Web site, http://hydrology.rice.edu/sspeed/, and to email ewraight@rice.edu to indicate they are from Rice. The fee for non-Rice community members is $50.