Learning from the past, looking to the future.

The vast majority of river cities, now growing at increasing rates, are protected from flooding by earthen levees. Recent natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina have provided warnings with regard to the need to maintain and upgrade our aging and deteriorating flood protection systems. Furthermore, for seismic regions like California, the combined seismic and non-seismic risks are creating a new class of engineering problems, with regard to safe levee design, that need to be addressed. In this presentation key findings and lessons learned from the investigation of the levee failures in New Orleans will be presented, and ongoing efforts to improve flood management nationwide will be discussed.