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Speaker: Raymond B. Seed, Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley)
California currently leads the nation in terms of levee risk; ahead of Louisiana, Florida and Texas. This risk has two main flavors: (1) risk to life safety and property, and (2) risk to the State's fragile and overstretched water supplies. The full scope and extent of these risks is not well understood by the general public, but improved awareness on the part of the State's political leadership has led to the inception of efforts to mitigate these potentially catastrophic risk exposures. Driven by more than a half century of political deadlock and inertia, and the hard lessons from the catastrophic failure of the levee systems in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, California has recently embarked on massive new programs to address the currently unacceptable levels of risk to both life and property, and to the State's vital water systems.
Dr. Seed will discuss the rapidly ongoing advances in these areas, and the State and Federal programs for assessment and mitigation of these risks; with emphasis on both technical and social/political challenges, progress to date, and the long-term planning currently underway for programs expected to require several tens of billions of dollars over the next two decades.
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