Monthly Engineering News - Newsletter Article
August 26, 2002
LSU Professors Team Up for Hurricane Center Public Health Project
(Project Director Dr. Ivor van Heerden discusses some of the environmental hazards that could potentially affect public health during a major hurricane event. Clockwise from center: Dr. Marc Levitan, Director of the LSU Hurricane Center, and Advisory Board Representative Dr. Jarrell Mathison, Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals Region I (New Orleans).)
Nearly ten years to the day that Hurricane Andrew - a Category 5 hurricane with 165 mile per hour (mph) winds - roared inland off the eastern Florida coast, the LSU Hurricane Center held its first organizational meeting for a new project, aimed at mitigating the public health impacts of such massive storms.
The meeting was held on Wednesday, August 21, 2002, at the Pennington Biomedical Conference Center in Baton Rouge. Principal Investigators and subcontractors from LSU, the LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans, and Notre Dame University, as well as members of a newly formed advisory panel of state governmental officials, convened for the first time as Project Director Dr. Ivor van Heerden formally launched the five-year project.
The over five-million dollar research project was funded through a grant award by the Louisiana Board of Regents under the Millenium Trust Health Excellence Fund. LSU is providing matching funds.
The project involves the development of a new "Center for the Study of the Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes." This public health center, much like the LSU Hurricane Center formed in July 1999, will be a virtual Center - comprised of researchers and experts from various disciplines operating from as far away as Indiana. Advisory Board members from various Louisiana state agencies will also be adding their expertise to the Center and providing project guidance.
Since January of this year an integrated team of many of LSU's top researchers have been collaborating on the newly formed Public Health Center's first pilot study, the greater New Orleans area. Together the team is working to anticipate and mitigate the public health affects that different hurricane scenarios would create in and around the city.
Study topics under the public health project include, as one would expect, Epidemiology and Health Science, but also Sociology and Mental Health, Veterinary Medicine, Climatology, Structural, Wind, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Modeling and the development of GIS databases, among others.
Representatives from the Louisiana State Departments of Health and Hospitals (including the Offices of Public and Mental Health), affected Parish Offices of Emergency Preparedness, the Department of Environmental Quality, and Baton Rouge Animal Control, among others, met Principal Investigators and subcontractors at the meeting and discussed the project in detail. LSU Principal Investigators presented their most relevant current research to the Board and discussed ways in which their research will be applied to the five-year project tasks. The end result promises to be of great benefit to Emergency Preparedness and Public Health efforts in New Orleans and the state, reducing human suffering and loss of life by being prepared before - and being ready to act following - a hurricane disaster.
It is no secret why New Orleans was chosen as the first place of the new public health centerŐs focus. Of the 26 hurricanes that have made it inland to Louisiana over the last century (1900-2000), 12 were major (Category 3-5 on the Saffir/Simpson scale) hurricanes with over 130 mph winds and 9-12 feet of storm surge.[1] A weight of recent evidence has demonstrated that New Orleans stands to be impacted the hardest in terms of loss of life, harm to public health, and damage to personal property. In fact, FEMA has named a hurricane striking New Orleans as one of the top three most likely and most devastating disasters that could happen in the U.S.
While the causes of the increased risk to New Orleans are still being studied (i.e., wetland loss, being below sea level, etc.) the focus of the public health project is ultimately to prepare for the worst-case scenario hurricanes and resultant flooding of the city. Public health (including physical and mental) impacts of such a devastating storm range from fatalities and injuries, to epidemic illnesses, to mental stress - including grief due to the loss of pets or domestic animals, and so on.
Photo Gallery
Mr. Hampton Peele of the Louisiana Geological Survey presents some of the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology available for detailing the greater New Orleans study area.
Dr. Jim Diaz of the LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans discusses the many types of infectious diseases that can thrive following major flooding in tropical environments.
Dr. Joannes Westerink of the University of Notre Dame discusses applications of the ADCIRC storm-surge modeling program relative to the Southern Louisiana Coast.
Principal Investigator Dr. John Pardue, Director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute, runs an EPANET simulation of potential chemical contamination following a major storm and the affects this would have on a drinking water distribution system.