Hurricane Harvey (Texas) Supplement -- Collaborative Research: Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association: Turning Disaster into Knowledge

Hurricane Harvey made landfall August 25, 2017 near Rockport, TX. With maximum winds of 130 mph, Harvey was the first Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in the US in over a decade and the first storm of this intensity to hit Texas since 1961. Four sub-teams were assembled to document damage in the landfall region in three coordinated waves from September 8-17, 2017. A pair of teams worked sequentially to conduct door-to-door Damage Assessments in Rockport, Port Aransas, Aransas Pass, and Bayside, supplemented by unmanned aerial surveys (UAS) of select residential areas. These teams were flanked by a Coastal Scout Team measuring high water marks as far east as Palacios. These Damage Assessments were followed by block-level scans of these same neighborhoods using a mobile LiDAR van. 3D point clouds were acquired for select structures obtained using portable LiDAR/imaging laser scanners. See Data Report for additional details.

Note: This was funded as a subcontract to the University of Notre Dame, through a supplement to the existing award to University of California at Berkeley (PI: Jonathan Bray). Prof. Ellen Rathje, University of Texas - Austin, served as the overall coordinator for all GEER teams deploying in Harvey and this special "STEER" team. Tracy Kijewski-Correa, University of Notre Dame, is coordinator of the STEER Team and PI of the subcontract. The team gratefully acknowledges Richard Fragaszy and Joy Pauschke for their support and swift allocation to deploy teams through this supplement.