LSU Wins Grant to Develop First 'Hurricane Engineering' Program

Written by Christina Ward, Staff Writer, DisasterRelief.org

If you are like millions of other Americans, you live near the coast — or you would like to someday. Perhaps you already have your dream home: a walk or a drive from the ocean, with a deck to enjoy the salt-water air and an outdoor shower to keep sandy footprints out of the living room.

But who designed your house? Was it built to handle the hurricanes that inevitably strike the U.S. coast each year? Can the structure withstand high winds, storm surge flooding, battering waves, hurtling debris, landslides and torrential rains? If you are forced to evacuate, will your home even be partially intact when you return? What about the rest of the community — the schools, churches, grocery stores, roads, bridges — will they crumble when the next hurricane hits land?

Maybe, maybe not. Hurricane-safe houses require intensive planning, say researchers at Louisiana State University (LSU). Coastal communities must be designed to address the specific problems that hurricanes bring when they slam into the U.S. shoreline. Despite widespread research into the nature and power of hurricanes — and major technological advancements in hurricane prediction — few of today's coastal communities were created with hurricanes in mind, the researchers say.

Students at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge will soon have access to the new hurricane engineering program. Photo courtesy of Louisiana State University.

LSU aims to change that by establishing the first "hurricane engineering" curriculum in the world to educate students in the technical aspects of preparing communities for hurricanes. The National Science Foundation awarded the school a $500,000 grant to develop the curriculum, which is a joint project of the LSU Hurricane Center and the LSU College of Engineering. Faculty from Southern University and University of Missouri-Rolla are also participants.

"Engineers and architects are not yet trained to address hurricane threats," said Marc Levitan, director of the LSU Hurricane Center. "We will use a wide range of resources to look at the problem from many angles. The goal is not to make houses hurricane-proof. The question is, how do you design to make a whole society hurricane-resilient?"

Hurricane damage is a growing national problem because coastal communities are rapidly expanding. Americans love the ocean and have been flocking to the coast for years, both for vacations and to settle permanently. More than 27 million people are expected to move to coastal areas in the next 15 years, according to data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The communities they join — or build — are at great risk of destruction by hurricanes.

Hurricane effects include extreme winds, storm surge flooding, river flooding, rain-induced landslides, windborne debris and wind-driven rain. Although these storm-related events are quite common, most coastal buildings are not designed specifically to withstand them. LSU's Levitan attributes this deficiency to a lack of academic coursework addressing hurricane-safe designs for aspiring engineers. A multi-disciplinary team made up of 23 faculty members will develop the hurricane engineering curriculum over the next three years.

Hurricane Floyd struck in September 1999, leaving homeowners all along the East Coast with severe flood damage.

With combined expertise in civil, environmental, chemical and mechanical engineering, as well as coastal science, landscape architecture and environmental studies, the team will create the first hurricane engineering textbook, with CD-ROM and Web-based educational materials. It will also create four initial courses, to form a civil engineering minor for students interested in a hurricane specialty.

Three of the courses will be under the civil engineering umbrella. Although exact course descriptions are in development, LSU has a general idea of their content. One course will focus on designing buildings in hurricane-prone areas. The second will have a broader scope — hurricane planning and design for communities and regions, to include transportation, flooding and evacuation issues. The third will teach hurricane preparedness strategy from an engineering standpoint, with emphasis on preparing rapid assessment tools to use in the wake of a storm.

The height of hurricane season runs from mid-August through October.

The fourth course, "Hurricanes and the Built Environment," will be open to non-engineering majors interested in disaster planning and will form the core of another new LSU program, Disaster Science, Mitigation and Management. This program examines general emergency planning, but also covers social and behavioral issues related to hurricanes and other disasters. Students may learn, for example, how people react to an evacuation order, how to set up shelters to minimize panic and how children are affected by massive storms.

"We've had a great response from FEMA about the proposed disaster science curriculum," Levitan said. The new LSU disaster program will be an option for people interested in a career in some area of emergency management.

"If the trend of rapidly increasing losses caused by hurricanes is to be reversed, a whole new philosophy of understanding, planning and preparedness is required," the LSU team explained in its project summary.

Levitan and his team hope to launch the first hurricane engineering course this fall. The textbook and the overall curriculum are due for official completion within three years.