Overview of Katrina Special Issue
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134, Issue 5
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall to the east of New Orleans. The resulting flooding, devastation, and deaths that have been widely reported in both the technical and popular press represent a major failure of the engineering, societal, and political systems. Precisely what happened, how could it have been prevented or mitigated, and what can be done to prevent similar failures in the future are subjects of continual investigation and controversy to this day. At least five committees or commissions have looked into the engineering aspects of Hurricane Katrina:
1.
IPET–the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force. This was originally organized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACOE) and expanded to include participation from other government agencies and independent consultants. Prof. L. E. Link of the University of Maryland (formerly, head of the USACOE Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, New Hampshire) chairs IPET.
2.
ASCE-ERP–American Society of Civil Engineers External Review Panel. Shortly after the hurricane, the ASCE established a panel, under contract with the USACOE, to review the engineering issues associated with the hurricane, and this has expanded into a close working relationship with IPET and a review of their work. Dr. David E. Daniel, President of the University of Texas at Dallas, chairs this committee.
3.
NAE/NRC–National Academy of Engineering/National Research Council. Responding to a request from the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, the NAE/NRC appointed an Engineering Review Committee (ERC) to review the products of the IPET. Dr. G. Wayne Clough, President of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the chair of this committee. The guest editor of this special issue is one of its 16 members.
4.
NSF-ILIT–National Science Foundation Independent Levee Investigation Team. The NSF funded a study of the behavior of the levee systems by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) center at the University of California, Berkeley. Researchers from Berkeley and many other institutions participated in ongoing studies led by Professors Raymond B. Seed and Robert G. Bea of Berkeley.
5.
LSU–Louisiana State University. The geological engineering staff of the department of civil engineering at LSU conducted its own evaluation of the design and performance of the levee systems. Professor Ivor van Heerden led the study.
There has not been a comparable open, independent, professional investigation into the response, recovery, and rebuilding activities of government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (USDHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the various state and local bodies. Also, as of this writing (December 2007), some parts of the engineering studies have not yet been completely reviewed–in particular, the IPET work on reliability and risk.
The papers in this issue of the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering deal with the geotechnical aspects of the performance of engineered facilities under the stresses imposed by Hurricane Katrina. Except for one paper on surge reconnaissance, these papers do not deal with many other equally important areas such as meteorology, coastal hydraulics, and storm modeling. It is hoped that comparable collections of papers dealing with these aspects of the storm will appear in other journals appropriate to those fields. The presented papers fall into six groups:
1.
One paper by Sills et al. presenting an overview of the levees failures and lessons learned.
2.
Three papers on the engineering geology of New Orleans and one on the history of the flood protection and drainage systems. The authors are Dunbar and Britsch, Rogers et al., and Rogers.
3.
Three papers on miscellaneous aspects of the response. These are the papers by Briaud et al. on erosion, by Zhang et al. on pavement behavior, and by Fritz et al. on storm surge reconnaissance.
4.
Two papers by Sasanakul et al. and by Ubilla et al. on centrifuge testing.
5.
Two papers by Brandon et al. on the investigations by the IPET team into the stability of the levees and floodwalls.
6.
Four papers by Seed et al. describing the investigations into the failures of levees and floodwalls carried out by the ILIT.
The authors of these papers do not always agree with each other. Rather than try to force consensus, we have decided to let the conflicts stand and allow the readers to decide for themselves the merits of the arguments. Furthermore, there are many others who have participated in the investigations of Hurricane Katrina, but their views may not be represented in the above papers. We thus invite discussion among the authors as well as other engineers who have become interested in the questions raised by Hurricane Katrina. We have already observed that many aspects of the behavior of engineering systems in New Orleans—such as reliability and risk—are still being studied and hope that papers on these investigations will be forthcoming for publication in the regular issues of this journal.
I would like to thank the Chief Editor of the Journal Jonathan P. Stewart and the editorial coordinator Jennifer Parresol for their unstinting assistance, especially in navigating ASCE’s electronic paper-handling system. Finally, we are all grateful to the anonymous reviewers, who had to deal with a large mass of material under some rather tight deadlines.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134 • Issue 5 • May 2008
Pages: 555
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Published online: May 1, 2008
Published in print: May 2008
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