Recently in Natural Disasters Category

UMR civil engineering student Adedotun Moronkeji studied up a storm this summer at Oregon State University, where he took part in research to better understand how tsunami waves affect the earth beneath the ocean.

Moronkeji worked with some Princeton University researchers to create mini-tsunamis at Oregon State's Tsunami Wave Basin, the largest experimental facility dedicated to the study of tsunamis in North America. The research was discussed recently at the sci-tech website Science Daily.

Moronkeji worked with Yin Lu “Julie” Young, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, to conduct studies that could lead to guidelines for building structures that will withstand tsunamis. Moronkeji's participation was funded through the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

Flood detection and monitoring have made a leap forward with the Flood Frog, a new device developed by University of Missouri-Rolla researchers.

Most monitoring solutions are expensive and face major challenges, such as maintenance costs, inconsistency and power requirements. UMR researchers hopped to develop a solution and created a novel monitoring system that is less costly, more dependable, and more flexible than what is currently available.

The Flood Frog is an autonomous system that's based on a wireless network and inexpensive sensor nodes. The "frog" provides a dramatic reduction in equipment and installation costs because a variety of embedded sensors can monitor everything from temperature to water tilt. The device then communicates using the GSM/GPRS mobile phone network and can send to a number of recipients through text messages, email, and FTP file.

Inside a waterproof case, the frog is powered by a battery that has a typical, unattended lifespan of three to four years. The battery can last a tad longer with a little fine tuning, too.

** No animals were harmed in the making of these puns (although the groans probably sound a little croakey).

Via the University Transportation Center at UMR (PDF).

One year after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, UMR civil engineer Jianmin Wang will present findings from research he conducted in the Big Easy to the American Chemical Society's National Meeting and Exposition Sept. 10-14 in San Francisco.

Wang and colleagues collected 238 soil and sediment samples one month after Katrina hit and analyzed them for pesticides and heavy metals. The pesticide levels were "generally not of great concern," but as many as 50 percent of the samples contained arsenic and 30 percent in their leachaets had lead equal to or above maximum level of those metals allowed in drinking water.

St. Louis residents are still dealing with the terrible devastation that last week's thunderstorm unleashed on the city. The frighteningly strong storm toppled semis and massive trees and left hundreds of thousands without power. But UMR experts say the kind of natural destruction the city saw last week is nothing to what is building up underground. KOLR-10 in Springfield caught up with DJ Belarbi and J. David Rogers to find out more about the looming major earthquake that threatens the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

“It would be a lot more grim than people realize,” explained Rogers. “We have tremendous vulnerability for transportation structures which passes through our state.”

Jefferson Parish officials expect to complete the first of its eight safe houses next week. Kontek Industries of New Madrid, Mo., designed and built the safe rooms, which will rest atop 21- to 27-foot concrete platforms. UMR researchers helped the company duplicate the power of large flying debris in its High-Bay Structures Lab on campus.

From the TImes-Picayune:

Don Utz, president of Kontek Industries, said the safe rooms were designed with some of the same principals that his firm uses in developing combat shelters for the Department of Defense. After building them to specifications given by the parish, Kontek tested their strength by hurling pieces of 2-by-4 wood at the structures at speeds topping 100 mph to simulate flying debris.

"If we're going to put people in harm's way, let's look at the worst-case that they'd have to experience," Utz said. "If we're going to sustain these people and they're going to be effective, they're going to need electricity and everything to continue to operate that safe house."

VIsions got the chance to witness the tests back in February.

The scientific journal Nature, in today's news@nature section, features an interview with UMR's David Rogers on his work to uncover what caused New Orleans' levy system to fail during Hurricane Katrina. (Rogers, pictured at right, has been back to New Orleans 11 times since Katrina.) Some excerpts from the Q&A:

What was it like working in New Orleans?

It was like pictures you see of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Second World War. Just complete devastation for mile after mile. No people, no bathrooms, no water. Choking dust; very fine dust on everything.

What went wrong with the levees?

We don't think that everything was due to overtopping. We feel a lot more of it was seepage related. When the storm hit, water was forced under the structures, eroding their bases and knocking them down.

Video from UMR's testing of safe houses will hit TV screens in Springfield, Mo., this evening. Angie Weidinger interviews DJ Belarbi about the large missile tests for the story, which will air tonight on KSFX News at 9 and on KOLR-10 News at 10.

As Fred Sanford is still saying in re-runs, and we're paraphrasing here, "The Big One is coming." Well, Elizabeth had plenty of reasons to doubt the predictions -- which turned out to be about as reliable as Iben Browning's prediction about the Big One back in 1990. (OK, just to bring everyone up to speed, we've now left sitcoms featuring Redd Foxx and we're about to partake in a discussion on earthquakes).

Browning's information was a little sketchy, but experts tell us it's still just a matter of time before the New Madrid fault really does cause big problems in the Midwest. "It could happen tomorrow," says UMR's Dr. J. David Rogers, who was recently appointed to Missouri’s Seismic Safety Commission by Gov. Matt Blunt. Furthermore, according to Rogers, the New Madrid seismic zone is capable of producing quakes that impact a far greater area than those that frequently shake parts of California and sometimes cause extensive damage.

P.S. Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco.

P.P.S. Uncle Tupelo has a good song called "New Madrid."

From the Wall Street Journal to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, it seems like everyone wants to know what Dr. J. David Rogers thinks about the levees that failed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. A geological engineer and an expert on disasters and whatnot, Rogers has been extremely busy since Katrina. Right now, he's on the National Science Foundation's Independent Levee Investigation Team; and he's not afraid to speak his mind. Rogers has been outspoken on everything from the role of the Army Corps of Engineers to self-serving politicians.

Should New Orleans be relocated or abandoned entirely? Rogers isn't willing to go quite that far, but he doesn't think the city will ever be the same. "You take the lowest areas and turn those into drainage polders," Rogers says. "If the water comes over the walls, it would flow into these areas and not adjacent neighborhoods on higher ground."

From the editors: Severe weather ripped through Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois this weekend, tearing off roofs and leaving several dead (read about it here, here or here). With the early start to the Midwest's tornado season, we asked Donald C. Wunsch II, the M.K. Finley Missouri Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMR, to share his insights into tornado prediction.

Every tornado season, we hear stories of their destructive wrath. As video cameras have improved, we’ve seen much more dramatic clips, attesting to their power. And, all too predictably, we hear of deaths attributable to their fury.

The problem is that tornados are as unpredictable as these stories are predictable. They are highly nonlinear phenomena, and while patterns that give rise to them can be identified, there is a high false alarm rate. False alarms are very bad when the goal is to generate a warning. They create a “Boy Who Called Wolf" problem – people learn to ignore them, and then fail to respond when the situation is truly dire.