Case Study

Case Study of Flood Mitigation and Hazard Management
at the Texas Medical Center in the Wakeof Tropical Storm Allison in 2001

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Zheng Fang, M.ASCE 1; Garrett Dolan 2; Antonia Sebastian, M.ASCE 3; and Philip B. Bedient, F.ASCE 4
Abstract: Between June 5 and 9, 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dropped upwards of 50 cm (20 in.) of rain on the Texas Medical Center(TMC) in Houston, causing the worst urban flood in U.S. history. The unprecedented rainfall event flooded hospitals, labs, undergroundtunnels and garages, and power stations, and resulted in excess of $1.5 billion in damages and the loss of decades of medical research.
Tropical Storm Allison served as a severe wake-up call to management at the TMC. In response, they developed a hazard mitigation plan
(HMP) to minimize the impact of natural and artificial hazards on the TMC campus and its member institutions in the future. Today, the TMC
is the premier example of a world-class institution that has a working hazard mitigation plan. This paper discusses the impacts of Tropical
Storm Allison (2001) to the TMC and the measures officials have taken to protect and upgrade the flood infrastructure as an example ofhazard management for other large, vulnerable institutions. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000139. © 2014 American Society of
Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Hazards; Floods; Management; Floodplains; Planning.

Introduction
The Texas Medical Center (TMC) was started in the 1940s withfunds from the M.D. Anderson Foundation aimed at the “promotion of health, science, education and advancement and diffusion ofknowledge and understanding among people.” By 1954, the TMC
had 11 institutions: four hospitals, two children’s hospitals, a university, a library, a speech and hearing center, a dental school, andan overall planning and coordinating group (TMC 2012). Over thelast 50 years, TMC has developed into one of the largest medical,
patient care, research, and education facilities in the world (TMC2010). Today, the TMC is made up of 50 member institutions, including 14 renowned hospitals, 21 academic institutions, including
schools of dentistry, public health, and pharmacy, and 15 support
service organizations (TMC 2010). Although the member institutions operate largely autonomously, TMC provides a variety ofservices to its member institutions including a forum for the
discussion of coordination and planning of day-to-day operations
and long-term growth, emergency planning and response, a police
force, property management, and parking.
The TMC campus is located within the Brays Bayou watershed,
one of the most urbanized watersheds in Harris County, Texas,
1

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Texas at
Arlington, P.O. Box 19308, 416 Yates St., Arlington, TX 76019 (corresponding author). E-mail: nickfang@uta.edu
2Social Performance Adviser, Shell Exploration and Production
Company, 150 N Dairy Ashford Rd., Houston, TX 77079. E-mail:garrett.dolan@shell.com
3
Graduate Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice Univ.,
6100 Main St. MS-317, Houston, TX 77005. E-mail: ags3@rice.edu
4Professor, Severe Storm Prediction, Education, Evacuation from
Disasters Center, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice Univ.,
6100 Main St. MS-317, Houston, TX 77005. E-mail: bedient@rice.edu
Note. This manuscript was submitted on June 21, 2013; approved on
February 12, 2014; published online on February 14, 2014. Discussion
period open until October 27, 2014; separate discussions must be submitted for individual papers. This paper is part of the Natural Hazards
Review, © ASCE, ISSN 1527-6988/05014001(11)/$25.00.
© ASCE

which covers an area of approximately 4 km2 (1,000 acres) andlies in a heavily urbanized area south of downtown Houston surrounded by Rice University, Hermann Park, the Museum District,Reliant Park, and residential neighborhoods (Fig. 1). The TMC was
built on a historic channel called the Harris Gully (Fig. 2) andparts of TMC are 1-m (3-ft) lower than surrounding geography,
making it one of the lowest points in the area. In the late 1940s,
the gully evolved from a natural channel to a boxed culvert system.
Today, the TMC drains into two underground pipes that feed Brays
Bayou. The line over the aerial map in Fig. 2 represents the underground pipes.
Bayous and urban streams are the primary means of drainage
for Houston and when left in their natural state, they are lined bywetlands and floodplains that absorb excess rainfall. Flood reduction programs led by the Harris County Flood Control District(HCFCD) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) during
the 1960s prompted the channelization of many Houston bayous,
including Brays and White Oak bayous. Brays Bayou, channelized
in 1968, was designed to accommodate a 100-year flood event, but
by 2001, 40 years of rapid urban development had reduced thechannel capacity to a 5- to 10-year rainfall event [15–18.3 cm(6–7.3 in.) in 24 h] (Risk Management Solutions 2001).
The Gulf Coast is prone to severe flooding from land-falling
tropical cyclones and associated extreme precipitation. Flat terrain,
thick clay soils, and frequent, high-intensity, short-duration rainfall
events contribute to large volumes of rainfall runoff and wide, shallow floodplains. Harris County has one of the highest rates ofrepetitive losses due to flooding in the United States [National
Wildlife Federation (NWF) 1998]. Since 1964, 25 federal disasterdeclarations have been made for Harris County, the majority ofwhich have been issued because of heavy flooding (FEMA 2011).
The federal disaster declaration program is designed to provide
local and state government with funds and assistance when theirresources become inadequate to address the damage caused by amajor disaster (i.e., flood).
On June 9, 2001, Tropical Storm Allison elicited a disaster declaration for Harris County. Damage estimates exceeded $5 billion,

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Fig. 1. Study area: the Texas Medical Center Campus and the Brays Bayou watershed [data from Harris County Flood Control District(HCFCD) 2010]

Fig. 2. Harris Gully area and its drainage pipe outlets [imagery and data from Texas Natural Resources Information System (TNRIS) 2013; images
by authors]© ASCE

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making Tropical Storm Allison the costliest tropical storm in U.S.
history (Blake 2011). The following section describes the impact ofTropical Storm Allison on the TMC and the measures that officials
have taken to protect and upgrade the infrastructure to protect fromfuture natural hazards.

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Tropical Storm Allison
Tropical Storm Allison made landfall near Freeport, Texas, on
June 5, 2001. Between June 5 and 9, the slow-moving storm circulated over the Houston-Galveston region, dropping concentrated
amounts of rainfall in three distinct periods. Northeast of Houston,
93 cm (37 in.) of rain was recorded in 24 h [National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2001], approximately
equivalent to 80% of the region’s average annual rainfall [121 cm(48 in.)] (HCFCD 2010) and more than the 500-year event rainfall calculated for the region (Risk Management Solutions 2001).
FEMA reported that the storm dropped enough rain to meet the
U.S. water demands for an entire year, or the equivalent of
121 billion m3 (32 trillion gal:) of water (FEMA and HCFCD
2002). In addition, Tropical Storm Allison had the highest rainfall

intensity recorded over a downtown area in the United States,
which was one of the major reasons causing severe flooding in the
downtown areas of Houston. The northeast Houston area received
more than 60 cm over 17 h during the severe storm (Fig. 3).
Five of the six major bayous that drain Houston overtopped theirbanks, causing serious urban flooding. In Harris County, floods resulted in 22 fatalities and 73,000 damaged residences (FEMA and
HCFCD 2002). TMC experienced this major flood on June 9, 2001,
with a total rainfall of 37.4 cm (15 in.) within 12 h. (Bedient andHolder 2001). The TMC area that is located at the downstreamof the bayou inevitably suffered from flooding during the storm.
During the night of June 8, Brays Bayou began rising; predictedflows increased from approximately 425 m3 =s (15,000 cfs) to
765 m3 =s (27,000 cfs) between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. At 2 a.m.,just before power was lost, a Harris County Office of Emergency
Management (HCOEM) gauge recorded 12.73 m (41.75 ft) at
Harris Gully, or approximately 0.76 m (2.5 ft) above the top of thebox. The water continued to rise after power was lost and highwater marks indicate that maximum flood elevations reached approximately 1.5 m (5 ft) in the TMC and surrounding areas.
Much of the TMC was flooded via the vast tunnel system thatconnects the hospitals. Both primary and backup electrical systems

Fig. 3. Seventeen-hour cumulative rainfall contours for Tropical Storm Allison (June 2001) (data from HCFCD 2010)© ASCE

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Table 1. Summary of Damage to Selected TMC Institutions (Adapted from Risk Management Solutions 2001)

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Institution name

Cause

Baylor College of Medicine

Basements flooded

Memorial Hermann Hospital

Basements flooded to depths of 11.6 m(38 ft) through underground connections
with other buildings and parking garages

Methodist Hospital

Water entered the Neurosensory building.
Flood depths of 12 m (40 ft) in thebasement

University of Texas Houston
Medical School

The force of floodwaters collapsed
unreinforced walls

St. Luke’s Hospital

Second basement level had 2.4 m (8 ft) of
water in one area; major flooding occurredin older buildings

Texas Heart Institute
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Research laboratories flooded
Minor flooding

were lost when underground electrical stations were inundated.
Without electricity for lights, refrigeration, air conditioning, running water, elevators, vital medical equipment, or life support andlife safety systems, 9 of the 13 hospitals were closed and more than
1,000 patients were evacuated via helicoptor (TMC 2002). TMC
suffered billions of dollars in damages and the loss of decades of
medical research records and ongoing experiments, setting somemedical research programs back decades (NOAA 2001). Table 1
shows the damages at many of the facilities within TMC; alone,
Baylor, Memorial Hermann, and Methodist hospitals accounted for$1.5 billion.
By all accounts, Tropical Storm Allison devastated the TMC,
but the resolve to rebuild by all parties was resolute; billions ofdollars were spent in and around the TMC to protect against future
flooding. Although resiliency efforts were driven, in part, by increased FEMA standards, requiring flood prevention systems at
critical care facilities to protect up to the 500-year level instead of
the 100-year, the TMC went on to develop a hazard mitigation plan
(HMP) that guided efforts to reduce future impacts of hazards on
the TMC campus and the various medical, research, teaching, andsupport institutions.

Developing the TMC Hazard Mitigation PlanAt the turn of the century, the U.S. Congress passed the Disaster
Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA) requiring state and local governmental entities to develop hazard mitigation plans to better prepare
for and reduce the potential impacts of natural hazards (FEMA2002). The real strength of the DMA was its emphasis on a deliberate and methodical process for organizing resources, assessing
risks, developing and implementing a mitigation plan that could be
regularly updated and maintained. Although the TMC is a privateorganization and not required to follow the guidelines put forthin the DMA, the Hazard Mitigation Plan Report, developed by
the TMC in the immediate aftermath of Tropical Storm Allison,© ASCE

Damageestimate

Damage description
Primary and backup power failed; critical storage
freezers stopped; lost 90,000 research animals and60,000 tumor samples
Approximately 50% of water came from one
tunnel connection; lost electrical infrastructure,
HVAC, diagnostic equipment, morgue, andlaboratories; $60 million in cardiac careequipment damage; it took 4 days to pump water;
evacuated 540 patients, all returned after 8 days;
18 months estimated for full recovery
Damaged 27,871 m2 (300,000 ft2 ) of space; lost
water, power, and air; discharged 400 patients anddid not fully reopen for 5 weeks; 6 months
estimated for full recovery
Lost 5,000 research animals; normal operations
restored after 1 month; $68 million needed toretrofit and prevent future flood damage
Lost primary power; flood doors installed attunnel connection to reduce damage; backup
power for essential services was interrupted;
critical patients relocated from older, lessprotected buildings
Pigs for artificial heart transplant tests drowned
Lost primary power$495 M$433 M$360 M$205 M$20 M$16.6 M
$3 M

documented a similar investigative process as laid out in the DMA
to identify hazards that posed a risk to the TMC campus. It focusedon storm-water management strategies and projects that could alleviate future flood hazards and resulted in identifying 42 priority
projects in and around the TMC. In the end, the report made clear
two important conclusions:
1. No one project or initiative will solve the flooding problems.
Relief from long-term flooding problems will only comethrough the deliberate and consistent implementation of multiple projects at a variety of scales.
2. Hazard mitigation projects need to occur within the TMC as
well as outside its geographic boundaries.
In some respects, the TMC’s assessment of storm-water management strategies has served as a precursor to a much larger,
comprehensive, and thorough investigation—the Texas Medical
Center HMP, published in August 2003 (TMC 2003). The reportcharacterized the full range of natural and artificial hazards that
could impact the TMC and identified and prioritized projects to
reduce the risks associated with such hazards. A risk assessment
was performed to calculate the expected future damages to physicalassets and people from natural and artificial hazards. The purposeof doing such an assessment was to get a baseline concept of what
physical and operational elements of an organization might be damaged by hazardous events, and which potential damages might bemost appropriate to address in the plan. This information formed
the factual basis for making decisions about how to most effectively
address the hazards and their effects in order to reduce or eliminate
future losses.
Although the hazards of flooding and wind damage were wellknown, very little effort was invested into the process of objectively
analyzing and characterizing them within a structured framework.
This was the first time the TMC formulated a comprehensive mitigation plan that integrated research and analysis of hazards, development of a strategy to address vulnerabilities, and stakeholder
priorities (TMC 2003). Consequently, it allowed the TMC to beeligible for federal disaster assistance and mitigation grant funds.

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Fig. 4. Flowchart of four phases in the TMC Hazard Mitigation Plan: (1) organizing resources, (2) assessing risks, (3) developing a mitigation plan,and (4) implementing the plan and monitoring process

Four major phases of hazard mitigation planning were incorporated
into the TMC Hazard Mitigation Plan as recommended by FEMA:(1) organizing resources, (2) assessing risks, (3) developing a mitigation plan, and (4) implementing the plan and monitoring progress. Fig. 4 shows a flow chart of these four phases in the TMC
Hazard Mitigation Plan.
Organizing Resources
The first part of the hazard mitigation planning process was toorganize resources, which occurs in two parts: (1) building theplanning team and (2) engaging the public in the planning process.
A hazard mitigation team (HMT) was established soon after
Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 (FEMA 2002). The team was composed of four parts: senior TMC management, TMC Steering Committee, TMC Board of Directors, and TMC consultant. The senior
management served as the hazard mitigation coordinator (HMC)and functioned as the primary decision-making group for the
TMC and the point of contact for interaction with the consultant.
The Steering Committee provided oversight and guidance throughout the process, giving feedback at status update meetings. The
Board of Directors was responsible for reviewing and approving
the plan. Local engineering firms were hired as the external consultants and provided technical input during the process.
Once a mitigation plan was drafted, the HMT presented theprocess, the schedule, and the anticipated benefits of the mitigation plan to a group of stakeholders, which is composed of© ASCE

representatives of TMC member institutions and local government
and agencies like the City of Houston and the USACE (TMC
2003). The presentation included a discussion of the planning process, the risk and vulnerability assessments, the proposed mitigation actions, and the implementation and monitoring functions. The
stakeholder group was invited to comment during the meeting andencouraged to contact the TMC and other members of the HMT
with feedback prior to the final approval of the plan. The plan has
remained dynamic and is continually updated to include new information. During the annual and 5-year maintenance and update process, the stakeholders were again invited to review and comment on
the hazard mitigation progress.
Assessing Risks
Hazard mitigation planning is intended to provide a systematic approach to researching and analyzing the natural and artificial events
that can impact a given system. Risk assessment is the most important part of the mitigation planning process. It requires the calculation of expected damages to physical assets and people from anatural or artificial hazard. The information gained during this process forms the factual basis for determining how to most effectively
plan for a hazard with the objective of reducing or eliminating its
impact.
By nature, hazardous events are very difficult to predict, andoften millions of dollars are invested to prevent or reduce the impact of a hazard that never occurs. Therefore, it is critical to focus

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on hazards that are not only severe, but more likely to occur thanothers. As a part of the risk assessment conducted for the HMP, theTMC campus and surrounding areas were studied extensively andthe existing studies and documentation were reviewed.
More than 100 hazards were identified at the TMC ranging fromhurricanes to earthquakes to terrorism. However, the majority of thehazards were related to flooding, and as a result emergency managers focused their hazard identification and risk analysis efforts on
flooding. The risks posed by the various possible hazards were narrowed down to three general kinds: physical damage to structuresand other physical assets, interruption to the facility operations, andcasualties and injuries to people.
Developing a Mitigation Plan
In the third phase of the hazard mitigation planning process, theTMC’s HMP was officially published in October 2003. The plan
included four major elements: developing mitigation goals andobjectives, identifying and prioritizing mitigation measures, preparing an implementation strategy, and documenting the mitigation
planning process. This plan was intended to meet FEMA and Stateof Texas requirements. With this unprecedented mitigation plan,
the TMC was able to implement many infrastructure improvment
projects to enhance its resilience on the campus.
Implementing the Plan and Monitoring Progress
Once the TMC formally adopted the plan in October of 2003,
the HMT began implementing the priority mitigation actions forcertain hazards. By closely monitoring the progress and implementation of the plan, the TMC has developed a procedure for updating
and amending the plan.
One of the very first implemented plans was to increase flood
protection and warning capability for the TMC area. In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, FEMA funded Rice
University to expand and enhance an existing radar-based flood
alert system (FAS) to provide additional flood warning and awareness to the TMC (Bedient et al. 2003). This system was tested withgood performance during Tropical Storm Allison by warning the
TMC emergency personnel several hours before the main flooding
occurred (Fang et al. 2011). The flood warning system archived theradar rainfall information as the only complete record of the eventdue to the loss of power at many rain gauges over the area.
Later in 2008, with the increasing awareness of recent hurricanes’ devastating impacts on many coastal areas, the TMC started
assessing the storm surge vulnerability on its campus due to its relative geographical location to the receiving bayous. One of the
projects was performed to evaluate combined risks of inland floodand coastal surge for the TMC campus using the most current lightdetection and ranging (LiDAR) information and updated hydrologic and hydraulic models for the TMC campus. Not only does
this particular study show vulnerable locations within the campus,
but it also demonstrates the enhanced resilience from many infrastructure improvements implemented after Tropical Storm Allison
in 2001. The following section introduces several flood hazard prevention measures implemented within the TMC campus.

development of the HMT, the TMC began a number of flood
mitigation efforts, most or all of which were designed to protect
the facilities to the 500-year flood elevation, although there was
extensive discussion whether TMC should be protected to 100-year
or 500-year levels. Finally, the 500-year level became the widely
accepted standard for critical facilities. To achieve additional protection from flood, the TMC implemented major improvements infour areas:
1. Hydrologic Infrastructure:a. Storm drainage systems were improved at many local
streets in and around the TMC area. Underneath several
major roads (Kirby, Hermann, and Cambridge), the TMC
has installed large-sized culverts diverting water awayfrom the TMC into Brays Bayou. This project significantly lowered flood levels within TMC (Bedient et al.
2007). Figs. 5 and 6 show the difference before and after
the storm-water improvement projects.
b. More than 50 watertight flood doors and gates were installed throughout TMC, especially in the tunnel systems(Fig. 7). The flood doors were mainly implemented toprotect many hospitals that are connected by the tunnel
systems from flooding. These manually operated systems
were designed to work individually and/or in coordination
with various facilities within the TMC. Exterior perimeter
floodwalls, berms, and barriers were constructed to protect facilities up to the 500-year flood level.
c. In order to reduce flood levels, Brays Bayou is being
widened from the TMC area to the Houston Ship Channel
in various stages of construction (Fig. 8). Four stormwater detention facilities that will hold approximately
13.2 million m3 (3.5 billion gal:) of storm water and cover
approximately 3.6 km2 (900 acres) are being constructedalong Brays Bayou by the HCFCD, and drainage enhancements like channel and bridge modifications arebeing added to the main channel (Project Brays 2013).
2. Accessibility
a. Access to the TMC during high-water events was improved by establishing a new Cambridge Street route to
and from the TMC over the Richard Wainerdi Bridge,

Flood Hazard Prevention Measures
Prior to Tropical Storm Allison, the TMC had experienced multiple
severe flood events and the campus flood characteristics were fairly
well understood. Subsequently, many of the institutions had taken
individual flood protection measures; however, as a whole the TMC
had remained vulnerable to the effects of flooding. During the© ASCE

Fig. 5. Historic storm-water systems in Harris Gully (data from
HCFCD 2010)

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Fig. 6. Current storm-water systems in Harris Gully (data from HCFCD 2010; images by authors)Fig. 7. Recently installed flood gates to keep flood water from getting into some low-lying areas on the TMC campus (images by authors)© ASCE

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Fig. 8. Widened channel section near Highway 288 crossing Brays Bayou as an example of implementing hydrologic and hydraulic infrastructure to
reduce flood levels for the Texas Medical Center campus (images by authors)and by elevating North and South MacGregor roads,
which allows drivers to access the TMC from State
Highway 288.
b. Sky bridges that allow pedestrians to walk above groundfrom building to building have been constructed in many
areas in the TMC (Fig. 9).
3. Utilities
a. Electrical equipment, lab animals, and research experiments were relocated from basements to upper floors inorder to protect against the 500-year flood.
b. Thermal Energy Corporation’s capacity to provide steam
and chilled water to TMC institutions was recently doubled, and its location was protected with perimeter floodwalls and gates above the 500-year flood elevation.
c. Two backup substations to support the CenterPoint Energy and Grant Substation were built to supply electricity
to the TMC.

d. Telecom cell towers were placed on the roofs of several
TMC garages to improve and sustain communications.
4. Management
a. The TMC adopted the new standards as required by
FEMA that critical care facilities need to protect theirfacilities against a 500-year flood event.
b. The TMC is now included in the City of Houston’s andHarris County’s annual hazard mitigation plans.
c. A Texas Medical Center Flood Management Group in2003 was formed to protect the integrity of the tunnel
system, which connects several major facilities fromflooding.
d. The TMC/Rice Flood Alert System, which monitors rainfall and the water level in Brays Bayou and provides earlyflood-warning predictions to the emergency personnel,
has been upgraded based on the funding from FEMA. The
state-of-the-art system provides a focal point for many
TMC institutions to watch approaching storms and disseminates rapid response to the events in a coordinatedfashion. TMC personnel are trained annually on using thesystems and upgrades.

Hazard Mitigation Grant Program

Fig. 9. Major sky bridge built to allow pedestrians to walk above
ground from building to building in the Texas Medical Center (image
by authors)© ASCE

Table 2 shows a list of the selected Hazard Mitigation Grant
Program (HMGP) Section 404 projects in the TMC with a brief
description, location, the estimated cost, and the hazard mitigatedby each project. After a major disaster, the HMGP provides up to
75% of eligible damage costs. The funds are generally determined
as a percentage of federal assistance for repairing public infrastructure, emergency support, and aid to individuals. Section 404 in the
HMGP allows FEMA to contribute an additional 15% to mitigation
measures that are cost effective and that will substantially reduce
the risk of future damage, hardship, loss, or suffering.
The most expensive project was to improve the storm-water
system serving the TMC area at a cost of $61 million. The renovations at the M.D. Anderson Hospital amounted to approximately

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Table 2. Major Improvements to the TMC

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Project titles

Highestestimated cost

Project description

Mitigation plan

Develop a hazard mitigation plan

Electrical equipment
improvement
Mechanical equipment
elevation
Telephone switch relocation

Improve, elevate, or relocate electricalequipment
Replace and elevate mechanical equipment

Power grid disconnect
Emergency power
distribution equipment
relocation
System relocation
Fuel storage tankreplacement
Detention pond
Flood gates
Submarine doors
Flood wall
Flow channel improvements
Storm water improvement
Storm resistant roof system
Flood alert system$500,000

Flood$5,823,125

University of Texas Health Science
Center
M.D. Anderson, Jones Clinic$3,944,693

M.D. Anderson

Flood

Relocate telephone switch above grade$1,235,000

Flood

Power grid disconnect at surface level toshut down service to single facility rather
than entire grid
Relocate emergency power distribution
equipment to above based flood elevation(BFE)
Relocate date center and network
communication above flood line
Replace existing underground fuel storagetank with above-ground unit
Enlarge existing detention pond

$250,000

Memorial Hermann Southwest
Hospital
St. Luke’s Hospital$1,495,000

St. Luke’s HospitalFlood$3,130,000

Memorial Hermann Northwest
Hospital
Memorial Hermann Southwest
Hospital
Memorial Hermann Southeast
Hospital
Hospice at the TMC

Flood

Flood

$7,631,250$868,000

Memorial Hermann Southeast
Hospital
MD Anderson
Rice University$61,000,000

City of Houston

Flood

San Jacinto Methodist Hospital
Rice University

Flood
Flood

$191,412$1,329,163

Install flood gates to entrances tobasement area
Install submarine doors and reinforce
tunnel walls
Build perimeter flood wall
Improve existing overland flow channel
to detention pond
Improve storm water systems includingstorm sewers, pumps, etc.
Install new storm resistant roof system
Enhance flood alert system for rice and
TMC Campus$17.4 million, the most spent at any one facility. Almost$9.8 million was allocated to improve, elevate, relocate, and replaceelectrical and mechanical equipment at the M.D. Anderson Hospital and an additional $7.6 million was allocated to build a flood wallaround the facilities that could not be elevated above the floodplain.
Similar flood reduction improvements were made at other facilities.
In addition, FEMA allocated $300,000 for enhancing an existingflood warning system to provide timely and accurate information
to the campus under severe weather conditions.
Rice and TMC Flood Alert System
Flood warning systems are one type of nonstructural flood protection. They have been widely adopted in the TMC because they initiate preventive measures that can help reduce the risk of damage
and loss of life in the case of an impending flood (Bedient et al.
2003; Fang et al. 2008). Flood warning systems have advanced
quickly in research in many countries around the globe in light oflarge floods in recent years (Bedient et al. 2000, 2003; Arduino
et al. 2005; Moore et al. 2005; Fang et al. 2008; Mukhopadhyay
et al. 2009). Moore et al. (2005) concluded that provision offlood forecasting and warning systems with effective mechanismsof dissemination and human response can yield significant benefits through forewarning of imminent flooding, allowing timely
evacuation, relocation of valuables, and management of affected
infrastructure.
Since 1998, the Rice and TMC FAS has successfully provided
flood warning during more than 50 storm events. This advanced
system has evolved through three generations and has played an© ASCE

Hazardprotection

Project location$175,000$1,800,000$800,988$300,000

Flood

Flood

Flood
Flood
Flood

Flood
Flood

important role in flood warning and flood control aspects for the
TMC. Innovative for its time, the original FAS used radar rainfall
and snapshots of water levels in Brays Bayou to predict peak flows
and provide up to 3 h of lead time for emergency evacuation (Fanget al. 2008, 2011). The lead time takes into account the travel timefrom the most upstream of Brays Bayou to the confluence point
near TMC. However, Tropical Storm Allison highlighted the needfor an enhanced system coupled with an appropriate management
strategy.
The TMC and Rice University worked together to develop andimprove the system after Tropical Storm Allison. Bedient et al.
(2003), Vieux and Bedient (2004), and Fang et al. (2008) presented
the second generation of the radar-based flood alert system (FAS2)
with evaluation of the system performance during three rainfall
events in 2006. Recently, the system has been upgraded to its third
generation (http://FAS3.flood-alert.org), which incorporates a hydraulic prediction tool: Floodplain Map Library (FPML). The
FPML, a geographical information system (GIS) framed system,
can be provided to emergency personnel in real time using Google
Maps (Fang et al. 2011). Fang et al. (2011) states that FAS generally performs with average differences of 0.88 h in time of peakand 3.6% in peak flows and R2 of 0.90 for the overall performance
among 11 major rainfall events since 2002. Moreover, this webbased system has an advanced communication module that automatically informs emergency personnel who initiate emergency
response. This state-of-the-art system has saved millions of dollars
in flood damages for the TMC over the years and serves as a prototype for similar systems in other flood-prone areas.

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Summary and Conclusions

Acknowledgments

In most respects, the impacts from Tropical Storm Allison havebeen enduring. It served as a wake-up call to managers who originally viewed flooding as a problem that could be solved throughmitigation at individual facilities. Management’s thinking wasinsular and focused on the point of intersection between theirindividual building and the flood. Flood issues are rarely simple
and clear cut. Instead, they require a strategic perspective, onethat sees the problem in context of a larger set of interdependent and interrelated variables. To do this successfully, a systems
management framework was required and eventually evolved
within TMC.
One example of successful responses during the event is from
Texas Children’s Hospital. They relied upon the early warnings to
greater extent than any other institution and their damage was lessthan their peer institutions by a large factor. Randy Right, chief
operating officer (COO), Texas Children’s’ Hospital, attributes itto the management team’s extension of the fire safety strategy
called defend-in-place to flooding. Defend-in-place refers to an
occupant-protection strategy that is employed when a person
cannot be moved out of the building (i.e., patient on life support
equipment). It calls for designing buildings with measures thatisolate and protect occupants from threats by installing protection
systems such as automatic sprinklers and/or air-tight doors. Texas
Children’s Hospital did have flood doors installed in their basement and they were closed in a timely manner, blocking the flowof water into the hospital. Modern systems thinking approachwithin the TMC has allowed a coordinated effort to respond topotential threats of flooding for the institution (McGlown andRobinson 2011).
The HMP created in the wake of Tropical Storm Allison embodies a transformational change in the way the TMC management
views flooding. For the first time, the problem of flooding is notseen as a discrete facility problem, but one over the entire watershed. The plan’s risk assessment methodology describes how consultants sought to understand the root causes of flooding and thesecondary and tertiary effects of various structural and nonstructural mitigation strategies regardless of its location on or aroundcampus. By looking at the interconnectivity of hazards, managers
began to understand how drainage worked and to see their problem
in the larger context of a watershed problem. The hazard mitigation
planning process forced managers to think beyond their immediatearea to look for casual relationships beyond their immediate area.
Table 2 lists many of the connected improvements made to the
TMC over the past decade in response to Tropical Storm Allison.
To many practitioners and emergency managers, the planning process and experience that the TMC has gained after this devastating
event can be applied to many other similar cases nationally andglobally.
Over the past decade, the TMC has experienced tremendous
growth. Since 2001, an estimated 15,000 new employees and morethan 1.1 million m2 (12 million ft2 ) of space have been added.
Looking back at Tropical Storm Allison and the way managers
responded, it is clear that long-term thinking about flooding has
evolved. Robert Stott, former TMC executive vice president andchief operating officer, regularly reflects on the impact of Tropical
Storm Allison: “every hurricane season I worry about our ability
to deal with the next big one : : : .and how vulnerable we are. We
know another storm like this will happen again because it’s thenature of where we live, so we can’t become complacent. Mother
Nature cannot be second-guessed” (R. Stott, personal communication, 2011).

This research was supported by the Texas Medical Center (TMC)
and the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from
Disasters (SSPEED) Center in Houston. In particular, the authors
would like to express their gratitude to Dr. Richard E. Wainerdi,
Dr. Robert C. Robbins, Mr. Robert Stott, and their personnel at the
Texas Medical Center for the great support in the past. The authors
would also like to thank all the reviewers and the section andassociate editors of the journal for their valuable comments andimportant advices on improving the quality.

© ASCE

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