Texas Flood Registry: Measuring the Long-Term Impacts of Major Storms
This webinar shares findings from the 2020 Texas Flood Registry Report, which provides an update on the health and housing impacts of Hurricane Harvey and other major storms.
Urban Reads: Kevin M. Fitzpatrick and Matthew L. Spialek
Kevin M. Fitzpatrick and Matthew L. Spialek discuss "Hurricane Harvey's Aftermath: Place, Race, and Inequality in Disaster Recovery."
Resilience and Recovery Tracker
The Houston area’s Resilience and Recovery Tracker was developed by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research with support from Chevron. It provides information on disaster recovery efforts from natural and man-made hazards, such as floods, climate disasters, public health crises, and chemical spills.
A wider view: Where Houston stands as it recovers from Harvey and builds its resilience
What do trees, bike lanes, and billions in federal disaster aid have in common? They are some of the building blocks of Houston’s future—one that is safer, more equitable and better positioned to withstand future disasters. They’re also among the inventory of measures included in the Kinder Institute’s new Resilience and Recovery Tracker.
Sociologist Rachel T. Kimbro discusses her new book, “In Too Deep: Class and Mothering in a Flooded Community.”
Winter Storm Uri showed how Harris County needs a tailored approach to disaster recovery
This week marks the first anniversary of an especially grim event in Texas’ history. Winter Storm Uri touched nearly every corner of the state with power outages that affected millions of people and led to at least 246 lives lost. Unofficial counts put the death toll at three times that number.
A new book, “In Too Deep” tells the story of Bayou Oaks, and its repetitive flooding, from the perspective of 36 mothers who are raising young children there. It follows the families across the course of more than a year, starting right after Hurricane Harvey flooded their homes, and tracking them across the recovery year and beyond as they work to restore their community for the third time in three years.
Mapping project brings Houston’s flood, environmental hazards into clear view
A flood on its own can be disastrous. But floodwaters combined with decades-old toxic waste sites and releases of potentially cancer-causing chemicals—that’s dangerous. Unfortunately, heightened flood risks are unevenly dispersed throughout Harris County.
Floods vs. forever homes: What drove decisions to rebuild rather than relocate after Harvey?
After catastrophic floods—like those after Hurricane Harvey dumped several feet of rain on the Houston area four years ago—survivors generally have two options: rebuild, perhaps with the help of flood insurance or federal reimbursement programs, or relocate, perhaps by selling a damaged home or waiting for a government buyout program. A new study has found that the route people choose might have more to do with their pre-flood plans rather than the scale of the disaster itself. This has implications for how policies are designed to encourage resiliency and managed retreat.
From hurricanes to COVID-19, state and local governments increasingly rely upon FEMA grants
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has become increasingly relied upon to help states and local jurisdictions recover and prepare for disasters, particularly hurricanes, floods, fires and more recently, pandemics. Proposed rule changes for the program could reduce future funding allocations, even as disasters seem to become more commonplace.
How Houston plans to plant 4.6 million new trees by 2030
Trees can cool our cities and make them more resilient. Here’s a look at what is being done to grow and protect the urban forest in the Houston area.
Disaster preparedness takes more than an infographic
Helping our most vulnerable neighbors weather the toughest storms requires hard work and commitment before, during and after crises strike.
If urban planners could proactively and precisely identify which buildings and civil structures are less resilient to flooding, not only could interventions be better targeted and more effective, but communities could become more engaged in the process. An interactive, geospatial artificial intelligence-driven platform could be the answer.
Urban flood buyouts are fracturing some Houston neighborhoods more than others
Since the 1980s, the federally backed home buyout program has been used to move more than 40,000 households out of flood-prone areas. What began as an effort to help farmers weather the devastating impacts of flooding has become a tool for urban and suburban homeowners to escape worsening climate risks. Yet as logical as this policy sounds, a new study from sociologists at Rice and Temple finds it may also be eroding the social fabric of some communities more than others—especially those with lower home values and higher proportions of Black and Hispanic residents.
Despite increasing risk in Harris County, more people are living in the flood plains
The Kinder Institute's 2021 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report highlights new data showing an increase in occupied housing units in the 100- and 500-year flood plains from 2018 to 2019. In Harris County, for example, about 2,000 homes were newly occupied—by either renters or homeowners—in the flood plains in 2019. Kinder researchers hope to better understand these development patterns, which can leave Houstonians vulnerable to flooding.
Rice University
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