A public lecture exploring some of the issues that allowed Hurricane Katrina to become one of the worst natural disasters of modern times will take place in Cambridge on Thursday.

The presentation, by Professor Tom O’Rourke from the US National Academy of Engineering, has been organised by the University of Cambridge’s Engineering Department, where he is a visiting professor this term.

Despite being just a category three storm when it made landfall, Katrina became the worst natural disaster in US history, resulting in the loss of more than 1,800 lives and more than $27 billion worth of damage. More than 80% of the city of New Orleans was submerged by torrential rain when the levy system failed, and entire blocks of housing and buildings simply vanished.

A little over one year on, the disastrous effects and political consequences of Katrina have been well-documented. Professor O’Rourke’s lecture will examine the disaster from an engineering and geo-systems perspective.

He will look in technical detail at what happened during Hurricane Katrina. This will be discussed in an historical context, taking into account the dynamics of the Mississippi River, the loss of wetlands and increasing exposure to storm surges and flooding that have influenced planning and politics in the Louisiana Delta for the last 200 years.

The presentations will also examine the mechanisms where breaches occurred in the levee system and its foundation characteristics. The consequences of the failures on the infrastructure of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico will also be discussed.

Tom O’Rourke is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on the U.S. National Academies Committee on New Orleans Regional Hurricane Protection Projects, which was commissioned to review the investigations of the US Corps of Engineers and their future plans for levee improvements.

He has authored or co-authored over 300 technical publications, and has received numerous awards from professional and academic organizations. His research interests cover geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, underground construction technologies, engineering for large, geographically distributed systems, and geographic information technologies and database management.

The lecture will be at 5pm on Thursday, November 30, in Lecture Theatre 0 in the Cambridge University Engineering Department on Trumpington Street. It is free to attend and open to all.

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