Rice University News Office
News Release DATE: Sept. 2, 1997
CONTACT:
Lia Unrau
PHONE: (713) 831-4793
E-MAIL: [email protected]
98-7
FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM CRUCIAL FOR HOUSTON MEDICAL CENTER
HOUSTON. Sept. 2, 1997 -- The Texas Medical Center area faces continued severe flooding problems unless steps are taken to provide an adequate warning system, says Rice University professor Philip Bedient, a surface and groundwater hydrology expert.
Bedient has proposed a "Flood Prediction System for the Texas Medical Center" that will provide advanced warning of flood situations and help protect the 110,000 people who work at or visit the Medical Center every day, as well as residents in the region and the Rice campus.
"The area hasn't seen severe flooding for about 15 years and we're long overdue," Bedient says. "Brays Bayou's flood response is so incredibly fast" due to heavy rainfall funneled directly to it, "that within three to four hours, the Medical Center can be in trouble."
The prediction system involves NEXRAD, the next generation radar, which is 10 times more accurate than any existing radar. It includes software that can translate rainfall into actual accumulation for a very specific region every six minutes, something researchers have not been able to do before. This, combined with geographic information systems (GIS), which display actual landscape images from satellite, and historical knowledge of flooding in the area, will provide a complete, highly accurate system for predicting floods and flood severity.
The plan calls for a World Wide Web flood home page, where real-time data, radar images and an alert and warning system will be readily available to personnel in the Texas Medical Center and to anyone else with access to the Internet.
Bedient also plans to coordinate the system with Houston TRANSTAR, the official emergency road network, and the Harris County Flood Control District.
A key goal of the flood prediction system is allowing more time for emergency personnel in the Medical Center to secure back-up power, re-route emergency vehicles or evacuate patients if necessary. The system should deliver several hours of advance warning instead of the current situation of only 30 minutes to an hour of lead time for an impending flood condition.
Richard Wainerdi, chief executive officer of the Texas Medical Center, was instrumental in moving Bedient's project forward. The South Main Center Association is the umbrella organization that facilitated the collaborative funding for the warning system, which will benefit institutions and residents in the entire Medical Center area. Funding for the flood warning system proposal will come from the Texas Medical Center member institutions, Rice University and surrounding community groups.
"Flooding today is a significantly more serious threat to Rice and the Texas Medical Center than in years past," said Malcolm Gillis, president of Rice University. "We are greatly concerned about the potential damage to our campus and our neighbors from major flooding. This early warning system is a good first start in minimizing our losses, but I emphasize it is only a beginning. Much more needs to be done."
The first phase of the system, including utilizing NEXRAD data and the flood home page, will be implemented by spring 1998. The second phase, including linking NEXRAD and GIS and coordinating with TRANSTAR and Harris County Flood Control, will be complete by early 1999.
In the flood scare on March 12 of this year, only 4-5.7 inches of rain were needed to sweep cars off roads, leave buildings in several feet of water and swell the Brays Bayou nearly out of its banks. In comparison, in the 1960s, the Brays watershed, a 100-square-mile region drained by the Brays Bayou, was able to handle 12-15 inches of rain before reaching flood levels. The difference, Bedient says, is rapid development of the area that provides no place for urban runoff. Since the bayou was last hit hard in 1983, when hundreds of homes were flooded, there has been enormous growth in and around the Brays watershed, with new buildings and parking lots now where detention ponds for temporarily storing the water were once planned.
Bedient is quick to point out that this flood warning system will not solve the problem of controlling the water if faced with a large-scale flood.
"We are not able to do very much about a flood at the 100-year storm [receiving 10.5 inches of rain in a 12 hour period] or even the 25-year level [8.5 inches in 12 hours]," he says. "The Medical Center area needs to provide areas for the storage of excess stormwater. With all of the buildings in the area, we have to seek out clever solutions for where the water can go."
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