If Hurricane Ike had made landfall just fifty miles down the Texas coast, the devastation and death caused by what was already one of the most destructive hurricanes in US history would have quadrupled. Ike made everyone realize just how exposed and vulnerable the Houston-Galveston area is in the face of a major storm. What is done to address this vulnerability will shape the economic, social, and environmental landscape of the region for decades to come. In Lessons from Hurricane Ike, Philip Bedient and the research team at the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center at Rice University provide an overview of some of the research being done in the Houston-Galveston region in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. The center was formed shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Its research examines everything from surge and inland flooding to bridge infrastructure. Lessons from Hurricane Ike gathers the work of some of the premier researchers in the fields of hurricane prediction and impact, summarizing it in accessible language accompanied by abundant illustrations—not just graphs and charts, but dramatic photos and informative maps. Orienting readers to the history and basic meteorology of severe storms along the coast, the book then revisits the impact of Hurricane Ike and discusses what scientists and engineers are studying as they look at flooding, storm surges, communications, emergency response, evacuation planning, transportation issues, coastal resiliency, and the future sustainability of the nation’s fourth largest metropolitan area.

If Hurricane Ike had made landfall just fifty miles down the Texas coast, the devastation and death caused by what was already one of the most destructive hurricanes in US history would have quadrupled. Ike made everyone realize just how exposed and vulnerable the Houston-Galveston area is in the face of a major storm. What is done to address this vulnerability will shape the economic, social, and environmental landscape of the region for decades to come. In Lessons from Hurricane Ike, Philip Bedient and the research team at the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center at Rice University provide an overview of some of the research being done in the Houston-Galveston region in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. The center was formed shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Its research examines everything from surge and inland flooding to bridge infrastructure. Lessons from Hurricane Ike gathers the work of some of the premier researchers in the fields of hurricane prediction and impact, summarizing it in accessible language accompanied by abundant illustrations—not just graphs and charts, but dramatic photos and informative maps. Orienting readers to the history and basic meteorology of severe storms along the coast, the book then revisits the impact of Hurricane Ike and discusses what scientists and engineers are studying as they look at flooding, storm surges, communications, emergency response, evacuation planning, transportation issues, coastal resiliency, and the future sustainability of the nation’s fourth largest metropolitan area.

A year later : lessons learned, progress made, and challenges that remain from Hurricane Ike : hearing before the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, September 25, 2009.

Recovery is the least researched and prepared-for phase in the disaster management cycle, but the critique of the post-Katrina's planning has begun to get researchers' attention with an emerging consensus on the value of recovery planning and its timing. My dissertation focuses on improving recovery planning by asking "how can the recovery planning process and outcomes following Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas inform theories of recovery planning?" This inquiry is addressed in three articles. The first article is an integrative review of the recovery planning literature, theories of planning and plan quality to lay out evaluation criteria. Recovery planning should be proactive, driven by local leadership, long-term and broad scope based on accurate data. Success of a recovery plan depends on setting transformative and restorative goals, alternative plausible futures and flexible policies. While federal recovery programs use several of these principles, they are criticized for short time frame, project-oriented and a prescriptive approach. The second article undertakes a qualitative analysis of recovery planning in Galveston. Resistance to start planning early reflected a lack of capacity. Hence, when planning started, it was based on limited fact-basis and expertise. The planning process was open and transparent, yet not adequately representative; and deliberation on important issues fell short. The result was a list of projects, not a plan, which failed to gain political and legal approval. The third study is an assessment of population, economic, and housing recovery. Population of Galveston is slowly restoring its pre-Ike level, but I found disparities among neighborhoods and race/ethnic sub-populations. Changes in shares of industries from job market and composition of jobs show that Ike was an interruption and acceleration to longer and broader trends in the local economy. Recovery of housing has either failed or been severely thwarted at the aggregate level. At the disaggregate level, the lag is even larger for damaged duplexes and multifamily units. Finally, I synthesize the findings of the three studies and suggest lessons for recovery planning practice and questions for future research to further inform our knowledge of the opportunities and challenges in disaster recovery planning. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/155735