GEER 2015 Midwest Flooding report

Read GEER 2015 Midwest Flooding report!

Dear Colleagues,

Unusual winter storms in the Midwest have sent large volumes of water into rivers and drainage areas causing historic flooding in Illinois and Missouri. Flooding disrupted transportation systems such as local, state, and interstate highways, rail lines, barge routes, and ferry services. Levee and flood protection systems were also severely stressed. As of Monday, January 4, 2016, at least 11 levees had been overtopped causing thousands of people to be displaced, and over 20 deaths have been attributed to flooding. Governors Bruce Rauner (Illinois) and Jay Nixon (Missouri) had declared disaster areas and a State of Emergency for affected counties.

A team from the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association, supported by the National Science Foundation, was mobilized to investigate the impacts of record and near-record flood crests and the performance of flood protection systems in Illinois and Missouri. The team worked collaboratively with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and with state and local organizations to augment the reconnaissance effort. The team documented the geotechnical, hydraulic, climatic and policy related issues as part of a systems-based approach to understand the overall performance of the flood protection system in the central Midwest. Understanding the response of the system under high flood loading, both areas under distress and those performing well, at a system level is important to provide data and methodologies for improved decision-making during future flood events. Preliminary observations of the 19 sites visited by the Illinois and Missouri teams are documented in the report.

The GEER report is available at: www.geerassociation.org

We invite you to take a look.

• Cassie Rutherford (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Nicolas Pinter (University of California, Davis)
• Joseph Gamez (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Leslie F. Harder, Jr. (HDR Engineering, Inc.)
• Adam Lobbestael (Lawrence Technological University)
• Michael Musgrove (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Rafael O. Tinoco (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Michelle Bernhardt (University of Arkansas)
• Behdad Mofarraj (University of Arkansas)
• Brent L. Rosenblad (University of Missouri)
• Minh Dinh Uong (University of Missouri)
• Anthony Heddlesten (United States Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District)