News Release 06-088
Researchers Release Draft Final Report on New Orleans Levees
700-page report suggests mechanisms for levee failures
Geotechnical engineers inspect a portion of the floodwall along the Industrial Canal.
May 22, 2006
This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.
Following an eight-month study of the New Orleans levee system and its performance during Hurricane Katrina, a 30-person team of researchers led by Raymond Seed and Robert Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, released a near-complete draft of their findings today in a "town hall" meeting in that Gulf Coast city.
Seed received two National Science Foundation grants to collect perishable data and to conduct an independent field investigation of the performance of the New Orleans levee systems with the intent the findings would prove vital for gauging the performance of levee systems distributed across the United States.
The levee study is one of more than 100 NSF supported in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. For decades, the agency has supported field investigations following all manner of disasters, allowing researchers to travel the world to collect perishable data as soon as possible after an event.
The results of these studies have provided emergency planners, responders and others with key findings ranging from how disasters inflict physical damage to the impact of social factors on evacuation and long-term emotional effects.
The Berkeley-led team's report is available at: http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~new_orleans
This project was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. CMS-0413327 and CMS-0611632. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
Information about the report release is available from Robert Sanders, Manager of Science Communications at Berkeley: rsanders@berkeley.edu; (510) 643-6998
The NSF award abstracts for the Berkeley-led levee research efforts are below:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0553197
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0611632
A listing of the NSF award abstracts related to the Katrina disaster are available on the NSF-supported Katrina Environmental Research and Restoration Network Website at: http://kerrn.org/projects.html
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Researchers have suggested multiple mechanisms for failure of New Orleans levees.
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This animation shows how the researchers suggest the 17th Street levee failed.
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Media Contacts
Joshua A. Chamot, NSF, (703) 292-7730, email: jchamot@nsf.gov
Robert L. Sanders, University of California, Berkeley, (510) 643-6998, email: rsanders@berkeley.edu
Program Contacts
Adnan Akay, NSF, (703) 292-4613, email: aakay@nsf.gov
Richard J. Fragaszy, NSF, (703) 292-8360, email: rfragasz@nsf.gov
Principal Investigators
Raymond B. Seed, University of California, Berkeley, (510) 643-8438, email: seed@ce.berkeley.edu
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