April 2019. Researchers at the University of North Carolina’s Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems and the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center, have entered into a partnership with the First Street Foundation. Both academic Centers and the Foundation share a common interest in understanding and management of environmentally-related disasters. The Foundation’s work involves using large real-estate datasets and state-of-the-art risk modelling techniques to quantify and communicate flood risks to homeowners across the US. Combining these capabilities with the unique datasets developed by the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center will enable better understanding of the relationships between the mobilization of contaminated sediments in the Galveston Bay and risks to human health and property values posed by flooding during extreme weather-related events. “Hurricanes Ike and Harvey have revealed substantial flooding risks in the Houston metro region, particularly those that occur outside the 100-year FEMA floodplains where the vast majority of properties remain uninsured by the federal government,” said Gregory Characklis, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at UNC who directing UNC Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems and is a co-investigator with Texas A&M Superfund Research Center.
“Local resources are likely to be strained after the type of extreme event flooding that would lead to significant contaminant mobilization and deposition in populated areas,” said Weihsueh Chiu, Professor, Veterinary Integrative Biosciences at Texas A&M University, and co-investigator with the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center. “The partnership between First Street and the academic Centers will drive research that should help local authorities deploy limited resources towards more effective remediation and reconstruction strategies.”
