A Representational Framework for Urban Flood Hazardscapes:
Situating Digital Tools for New Perspectives on Risk Analysis and Communication in the Galveston Bay Area

Summary

Storm surge flooding threatens hundreds of thousands of persons and billions of dollars in property in the Houston-Galveston metro area. In a series of studies, cartographic and augmented reality (AR) visualizations of storm surge hazard and impact zones in the Galveston Bay Area were developed and user tested. Results from these studies are presented, with an emphasis on how data management and design decisions (e.g., scale, data variable selection, level of aggregation, filtering, symbology, and perspective) can radically alter the shape and character of the hazard zone. While some quantitative results are presented, particular consideration is given to qualitative assessments of how such data and design decisions situate the hazard relative to the users of these map and AR-based tools. The seminar will conclude with a brief discussion of new urban flood communication and reporting tools that are under development. This seminar series is co-organized by CHUD (Center for Housing & Urban Development), GeoSAT (Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications and Technology), and TAMIDS-DAL (Design and Analytics Lab for Urban Artificial Intelligence @ Texas A&M Institute of Data Science).

Speaker’s information

Dr. David Retchless received his Ph.D. in Geography from the Pennsylvania State University in 2015. He joined the Marine Sciences Department at Texas A&M University at Galveston as an Assistant Professor in 2015. Dr. Retchless teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in geographic information systems (GIS) and marine geography. His research foci include communicating climate change and coastal hazards, geospatial tool design and evaluation, and geospatial analysis of coastal and marine change. He has helped generate over $2.2 million in external research funding (as PI and Co-PI) from the Texas General Land Office, National Science Foundation, and other state and federal funders. He has written 14 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters, and three conference proceedings, and presented at 25 conferences.

Time: 10:00-10:30 a.m. US Central Time (Thursday, February 16, 2023)
Zoom Meeting ID: 7326410814 Passcode: 575829
Direct Link: https://tamu.zoom.us/j/7326410814?pwd=cGZKY045dmVkdzVRLy9MYWhocWorQT09

Faculty Host: Xinyue Ye, Dept. of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, TAMU