REBUILDING A COMMUNITY POST HURRICANE KATRINA By: Vernessa Shih Fall 2012 FINAL PRESENTATION PP M224A GIS Professor Kawano

Hurricane Katrina Aug 23,2005 – Aug 31, 2005 What happened? What were rebuilding goals? What were parish priorities? What areas saw the most success in rebuilding?

Hurricane KatrinaAug 23, 2005Aug 31, mph

Let’s get factual...  217,000 Homes Damaged  1.4 million people displaced, 15 million people affected  estimated billion dollar cost  (referred to as the costliest natural disaster in history)  extreme coastal erosion  Over 1,800 deaths

 Long Term Recovery Plan  Joint Effort – Louisiana Recovery Authority and State of Louisiana  Parish leaders in 25 Southern Parishes  Community priorities  Public input to consensus STRONGLY AGREED: 98% agreed that they should build back differently to address issues of poverty, hurricane/flood risk and environmental 74% agreed that some places are too at risk to rebuild 50/50 split – ensuring that everyone who wants to return could come back to their original home site

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU? (PICK THREE) 1.Build better levees and other hurricane protection (58%) 2.Encourage development of new housing (34%) 3.Restore coastal areas (27%) 4.Improve schools (26%) 5.Attracting new businesses to the area (26%) 6.Making reconstruction jobs available to residents (25%) 7.Providing better community/social service (21%) 8.Making street/highway improvements (13%) 9.Reducing crime (13%) 10.Devising a workable evacuation plan (13%)

FiveParish Breakdown Jefferson Parish 1.Build better levees and other hurricane protection 2.Restore coastal areas 3.Attract new businesses to the area 4.Improve the school *107,000 damaged homes Orleans Parish 1.Build better levees and other hurricane protection 2.Encourage development of new housing 3.Improve schools 4.Make reconstruction jobs more available *largest number of displaced residents *90% evacuated Plaquemines Parish 1.Build better levees and other hurricane protection 2.Restore coastal areas 3.Attract new businesses to the area 4.Improve schools *over 50% buildings destroyed St. Bernard Parish 1.Build better levees and other hurricane protection 2.Restore coastal areas 3.Buy out flood-prone properties 4.Encourage developmen t of new housing *29,000 destroyed homes St. Tammany Parish 1.Build better levees and other hurricane protection 2.Restore coastal areas 3.Attract new businesses to the area 4.Make highway and street improvement s *38,900 damage claims

Louisiana Population Density by FEMA Emergency Evacuation Routes

Indicators for Improvement: Calculating the decrease in students dropouts for 7-12 th graders, comparing 2000 to 2010 (from schools statistics tracked by Louisiana Department of Education *Highlighting areas of high African Am population

Hurricane Katrina completely changed the way our country reacts to disasters

Every Error Known to Man...

Caveats Clearly it would have been beneficial to have access to additional data regarding the Hurricane, but when Katrina hit and then Rita, gathering data is most likely not at all a priority Regardless of missing attributes, this is still an important area of study Groundbreaking in terms of being able to see new applications of GIS for other disasters, using Google Earth/Twitter/Social Networking to track disasters, Hurricane Sandy Shapefiles are already available Problems: Many clearinghouses, databases, including FEMA have been closed or have severely limited access only allowed to organizations associated with rebuilding or giving grants Disaster data is by nature very unreliable

Sources ESRI/Social Explorer NASA CENSUS.gov/American Fact Finder National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration FEMA GOOGLE EARTH US Geological Survey Greater New Orleans Community Data Center Regional Planning Commission for New Orleans City of New Orleans Mysealevel.org Regional Planning Commission for Great Metro New Orleans LSU AGU Center LSU Atlas Database SimplyMap Louisiana Dept of Education Crisis Commons Louisiana Site Selection.Com Louisiana Map.Com State of Louisiana.gov

Skills Used  Point or line graduated symbol  Geoprocessing – Clipping  Geoprocessing – Joining  Geocoding – FEMA Locations  KMZ/KML files  Custom Shape files  Original Data  Aggregating attribute fields  Attribute sub-sets selections  Boundary sub-sets selections  Images