REDUCE DISASTER RISKS
A “SEA CHANGE OF TRANSFORMATION” How USACE dam and levee safety programs changed in the post-Hurricane Katrina environment By Charles Dervarics
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am and levee experts at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are looking back at a decade of major internal changes made in response to devastating hurricanes, storms, and floods. From a greater focus on planning to improved communication and management approaches, USACE has embarked on a “sea change of transformation,” said Eric C. Halpin, P.E., special assistant for dam and levee safety at USACE Headquarters. “We’ve seen a huge culture change” since 2005, he added, with lessons learned that fundamentally changed the way USACE does business. “The agency recognized a need to change our fundamental approaches to how we conduct business, including how we plan, assess, design, construct, maintain, and operate our infrastructure systems,” he noted. These changes have had an impact on virtually all aspects of USACE’s operation, affecting everything from decision-making to technology. Fundamental to USACE’s approach is the identification and the study of risk – such as the likelihood of natural events occurring, the performance of the infrastructure in such events, and the devastating effects on life and property of poor performance or failure. Such issues now guide major discussions at headquarters, regional, and local levels. From loss of property and life to major fiscal effects, “There’s a gigantic cost to not making changes,” Halpin said. ADDRESSING RISK AND USING TECHNOLOGY
Central to USACE’s new philosophy is how it makes decisions both at headquarters and at regional and local levels. For decades, USACE typically used a standard design approach and made every project fit within it. But that approach failed to consider risk as well as cost factors, Halpin said. “It’s no longer justified.” The new approach is risk-informed decision-making, in which experts review different options looking not only at cost but also at the risks for loss of life and property as well as environmental damage. In USACE’s view, risk management is a process of identifying potential problems, evaluating options, and setting priorities to address the most pressing challenges. “Having one standard design for how to address an entire continent of diverse conditions often left us with less-than-optimal
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SERVING THE NATION AND THE ARMED FORCES
risk management,” he said. “The issue now is, ‘What is the most cost-effective risk reduction measure?’” This new approach has saved the federal government about $7 billion, he said, and will “cost avoid” several hundred million dollars in construction on Florida’s Herbert Hoover Dike, a 143-mile earthen dam that surrounds Lake Okeechobee and is key to risk reduction, water resource management, and ecosystems in South Florida and the Everglades. At that site, installing a cutoff wall and replacing culverts have reduced flood risks from high lake levels in South Florida. In other cases, projected repair costs have dropped as USACE engineers design more customized solutions. “It’s having the right scope of work for the fix,” he said. USACE also is leveraging science and technology to vastly improve understanding of the physical environment and enhance the quality of its data. Popular tools include those that can model flood outcomes and damage, including estimates on loss of life and property and emergency action/evacuation planning. Additionally, USACE has employed research into failure modes and other risk drivers such as over wash and internal erosion, I-wall performance, and the social science of evacuation and mobilization. As modeling technology evolves, USACE has built it into its approach to study risk. For example, USACE has modeled hundreds of coastal events as they might affect New Orleans in the future. “We’ve employed methods to take new science into account, resulting in improved decisions,” Halpin said. With Katrina, 2011 flooding across the Midwest, and Superstorm Sandy a year later, one lesson learned is that prevention saves money. “There’s a bigger cost for the nation in not investing,” he said, noting that the U.S. government committed $22 billion for infrastructure repair post-event after Katrina, Sandy, and the Midwest flooding. A more cost-effective investment would include infrastructure safety prior to these events. From assessing the potential damage of hurricanes to climate change, tools to assess risk now may save millions in the future, he said. With responsibility for more than 700 dams and approximately 2,500 levee systems – many of them more than 50 years old – USACE also has recognized the need to enhance its governance structure. Prior to Katrina, Halpin said, “We were a