| What Happened With Katrina?
The question has vexed everyone since the first levee gave way. Now some of Rensselaer’s leading researchers are seeking answers.
With powerful centrifuges and systems dynamics software, teams are using exceptional tools to explore critical issues from the levee failures to the FEMA response. Their investigations not only place Rensselaer among the leaders in Katrina research, but may well inform public policy for years to come.
On the Ground in New Orleans
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When the nation’s leading experts in natural disasters headed to New Orleans, Tom Zimmie naturally took his place among them. The experience landed him an audience with two congressional committees. |
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For a week, beginning each morning at 8 a.m., the researchers set out in the dark to examine the New Orleans levees from every angle. As part of the NSF-sponsored reconnaissance team, Zimmie, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and the other experts who are collaborating with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers investigated the damage caused by overtopping, the effectiveness of emergency “patches,” and the decision process behind the levee configuration.
According to the team’s testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the levees might have failed for all those reasons and then some.
“Field observations indicated various causes: overtopping of the levees, erosion, failure in foundation soils underlying the levees, seepage through the soils under the levees causing piping failures, and this is not a complete list,” Zimmie told the committee in a prepared statement.
The initial report, released to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in November, suggested that many breaches occurred at “weak links” where different levee or wall sections came together. But pinpointing causes will require more data, so the Corps turned to Rensselaer again — for a smaller solution.
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