Characterization of peak streamflows and flood inundation of selected areas in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana from the August and September 2017 flood resulting from Hurricane Harvey

Watson, Kara M.; Harwell, Glenn R.; Wallace, David S.; Welborn, Toby L.; Stengel, Victoria G.; McDowell, J. Spotts

doi:10.3133/sir20185070

Cited by 39 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Keywords: Disaster epidemiology, Environmental exposure assessment, Post-disaster rapid response research, Extreme weather events, Hurricanes, Flooding, Post-flooding environmental stressors, Post-flooding respiratory outcomes, Geographic information system Background On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey, the secondcostliest natural disaster in U.S. history [1][2][3] made landfall in Texas, and caused unprecedented catastrophic flooding across the greater Houston area, the nation's fourth-largest city. Torrential rainfall over several days [4,5] dropped an estimated 27 trillion tons of rain water on the Houston metropolitan area [6,7], leading to the damage of roughly 136,000 homes [8] and causing 68 direct fatalities [9] and more than 75 total deaths [10,11]. Houston's Hobby Airport recorded 35.6 in.…”

Section: (Continued From Previous Page)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Houston hurricane Harvey health (Houston-3H) study: assessment of allergic symptoms and stress after hurricane Harvey flooding

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused unprecedented flooding across the greater Houston area. Given the potential for widespread flood-related exposures, including mold and sewage, and the emotional and mental toll caused by the flooding, we sought to evaluate the short- and long-term impact of flood-related exposures on the health of Houstonians. Our objectives were to assess the association of flood-related exposures with allergic symptoms and stress among Houston-area residents at two time points: within approximately 30 days (T1) and 12 months (T2) after Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. Methods The Houston Hurricane Harvey Health (Houston-3H) Study enrolled a total of 347 unique participants from four sites across Harris County at two times: within approximately 1-month of Harvey (T1, n = 206) and approximately 12-months after Harvey (T2, n = 266), including 125 individuals who participated at both time points. Using a self-administered questionnaire, participants reported details on demographics, flood-related exposures, and health outcomes, including allergic symptoms and stress. Results The majority of participants reported hurricane-related flooding in their homes at T1 (79.1%) and T2 (87.2%) and experienced at least one allergic symptom after the hurricane (79.4% at T1 and 68.4% at T2). In general, flood-exposed individuals were at increased risk of upper respiratory tract allergic symptoms, reported at both the T1 and T2 time points, with exposures to dirty water and mold associated with increased risk of multiple allergic symptoms. The mean stress score of study participants at T1 was 8.0 ± 2.1 and at T2, 5.1 ± 3.2, on a 0–10 scale. Participants who experienced specific flood-related exposures reported higher stress scores when compared with their counterparts, especially 1 year after Harvey. Also, a supplementary paired-samples analysis showed that reports of wheezing, shortness of breath, and skin rash did not change between T1 and T2, though other conditions were less commonly reported at T2. Conclusion These initial Houston-3H findings demonstrate that flooding experiences that occurred as a consequence of Hurricane Harvey had lasting impacts on the health of Houstonians up to 1 year after the hurricane.

show abstract

Section: (Continued From Previous Page)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Houston hurricane Harvey health (Houston-3H) study: assessment of allergic symptoms and stress after hurricane Harvey flooding

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…E. J. Wing et al: Simulating historical flood events at the continental scale 2018; Sampson et al, 2015;Wing et al, 2017;Winsemius et al, 2013;Yamazaki et al, 2011). These models sacrifice some local accuracy compared to the traditional engineering approach but benefit from complete spatial coverage and the ability to be re-run as climatic and landscape conditions change, all within reasonable timescale and resource limits.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Global flood models have been compared to local engineering flood maps in Europe and the US but only for a small handful of river basins, inhibiting wide-area testing (Dottori et al, 2016;Sampson et al, 2015;Ward et al, 2017;Winsemius et al, 2016). Wing et al (2017) presented a model of the contiguous US, adopting the higherquality hydrographic, hydrometric, terrain, and protection data available in the US compared to available data globally. They compared their model to FEMA's large, yet incomplete, database of 100-year flood maps, charting a high degree of similarity between the large-scale model and the engineering approach espoused by FEMA.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating historical flood events at the continental scale: observational validation of a large-scale hydrodynamic model

Wing

Smith

Marston³

et al. 2021

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Continental–global-scale flood hazard models simulate design floods, i.e. theoretical flood events of a given probability. Since they output phenomena unobservable in reality, large-scale models are typically compared to more localised engineering models to evidence their accuracy. However, both types of model may share the same biases and so not validly illustrate their predictive skill. Here, we adapt an existing continental-scale design flood framework of the contiguous US to simulate historical flood events. A total of 35 discrete events are modelled and compared to observations of flood extent, water level, and inundated buildings. Model performance was highly variable, depending on the flood event chosen and validation data used. While all events were accurately replicated in terms of flood extent, some modelled water levels deviated substantially from those measured in the field. Despite this, the model generally replicated the observed flood events in the context of terrain data vertical accuracy, extreme discharge measurement uncertainties, and observational field data errors. This analysis highlights the continually improving fidelity of large-scale flood hazard models, yet also evidences the need for considerable advances in the accuracy of routinely collected field and high-river flow data in order to interrogate flood inundation models more comprehensively.

show abstract

“…In order to provide some graphical intuition for the results of the HWM evaluation, we compare our WRF-Hydro-HAND model results with USGS-FEMA flood-inundation maps (Watson et al, 2018), which are created using HWMs and Lidar elevation data. The modeled results are created with the maximum streamflow in the predicted period.…”

Section: Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hurricane Scenario Generation for Uncertainty Modeling of Coastal and Inland Flooding

Kim

Kutanoğlu

et al. 2021

Front. Clim.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hurricanes often induce catastrophic flooding due to both storm surge near the coast, and pluvial and fluvial flooding further inland. In an effort to contribute to uncertainty quantification of impending flood events, we propose a probabilistic scenario generation scheme for hurricane flooding using state-of-art hydrological models to forecast both inland and coastal flooding. The hurricane scenario generation scheme incorporates locational uncertainty in hurricane landfall locations. For an impending hurricane, we develop a method to generate multiple scenarios by the predicated landfall location and adjusting corresponding meteorological characteristics such as precipitation. By combining inland and coastal flooding models, we seek to provide a comprehensive understanding of potential flood scenarios for an impending hurricane. To demonstrate the modeling approach, we use real-world data from the Southeast Texas region in our case study.

show abstract

Characterization of peak streamflows and flood inundation of selected areas in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana from the August and September 2017 flood resulting from Hurricane Harvey

Cited by 39 publications

References 2 publications

Houston hurricane Harvey health (Houston-3H) study: assessment of allergic symptoms and stress after hurricane Harvey flooding

Houston hurricane Harvey health (Houston-3H) study: assessment of allergic symptoms and stress after hurricane Harvey flooding

Simulating historical flood events at the continental scale: observational validation of a large-scale hydrodynamic model

Hurricane Scenario Generation for Uncertainty Modeling of Coastal and Inland Flooding

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About