Editor’s note: Links to images for download appear at the end of this release.

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Mike Williams
713-348-6728
mikewilliams@rice.edu

Rice-designed Flood Alert System performs well

Monitor provides early warning to Texas Medical Center institutions 

HOUSTON – (May 26, 2015) – The Rice University and Texas Medical Center Flood Alert System 3 performed up to spec and beyond during the storm that deluged Houston May 25 and 26, according to its designer, Phil Bedient. Bedient is the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering at Rice and director of Rice’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center.

The system, put into place in 1997 and upgraded since, gives advance warning of floods that could affect the scores of buildings in the densely packed medical center. It also monitors Brays Bayou, which runs through the center, in real time with flow charts and webcams.

Bedient said the Memorial Day event dropped 8.4 inches of rain over 24 hours in the watershed area and pushed Brays to the limit.

Where it passes beneath Main Street, Brays overflows its banks when water flows through at about 29,000 cubic feet per second. The system predicted a peak flow of 28,000. “I think the chart speaks for itself,” Bedient said.

Bedient monitored the system until the rain slowed at 3 a.m. Tuesday. “We were in communication with the medical center the whole evening,” he said. “It was a monster amount of rain with a great intensity, but the predictive system worked as well as I’ve ever seen it. I was actually amazed.”

Bedient said that while the bayou overflowed its banks further downstream, there were no reports of flooded buildings in the medical center as the institutions “completely locked down” due to the warnings. “They can shut the whole medical center down like a castle, and they did that early on,” he said.

-30-

This news release can be found online at https://news2.rice.edu/2015/05/26/rice-designed-flood-alert-system-performs-well-2/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews

Video:

A high-resolution version of the video can be downloaded at https://rice.box.com/s/ob5x9w1bjcaq8qdaqfyioyiixe1to4zm

Related Materials:

SSPEED Center: http://sspeed.rice.edu/sspeed/

George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://engr.rice.edu

Images for download:

https://news2.rice.edu/files/2015/05/0526_FAS-1-web.jpg

Floodwaters fill State Highway 288 just east of Hermann Park in Houston on May 26. A storm dropped more than 8 inches of rain on the neighborhood overnight, causing Brays Bayou to overflow at 288. Upstream near the Texas Medical Center, the bayou stayed within its banks, as predicted by the Rice-designed Flood Alert System. (Credit: Brandon Martin/Rice University)

https://news2.rice.edu/files/2015/05/0526_FAS-3-web.jpg

An observer stands at water’s edge on State Highway 288 after overnight rain flooded the road. (Credit: Brandon Martin/Rice University)

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,888 undergraduates and 2,610 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked among some of the top schools for best quality of life by the Princeton Review and for best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.