William "Evan" Gillespie, CPO, SSMP -- whose testimonial on his career in security and the benefits of pursuing certifications the International Foundation for Protection Officers in January 2020 -- recently submitted a Master's-level paper to the IFPO article archives titled "An Analysis of Hurricane Harvey." Here is the abstract from the paper:
In August of 2017, a category 4 hurricane formed off the coast of West Africa. It soon made its way to the Gulf of Mexico and on August 25th, it made landfall in southeastern Texas. The ensuing aftermath of Harvey’s landfall culminated in several days of constant rain over Houston and the surrounding areas, barraging a 10,000 square mile metropolitan area, the fourth largest in the United States, with massive flooding of near-biblical proportions.
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The end result was over 100 human lives lost and over $125 billion in damage to a city that had seen explosive population growth as a result of Houston’s rapid expansion and development renaissance. This paper seeks to analyze the ways in which emergency and disaster management agencies and professionals prepared for and responded to the second costliest and most destructive natural disaster in United States history.
This paper also analyzes if local, state, and federal governmental agencies tasked with managing emergencies have applied lessons learned from previous modern disasters in order to effectuate the Harvey response and recovery effort, as well as if lessons learned from Harvey are being applied today, just three years removed from the disaster.
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