An Analysis of Engineering Innovation, Ethics and Hurricane Katrina

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, focusing on the engineering failures, ethical implications, and the subsequent recovery efforts. It begins with an overview of the hurricane's impact, including the destruction caused by the storm surge and flooding, and compares it to Hurricane Andrew. The report then delves into the effects on human life, the environment, and the economy of the affected region. It examines the formation and outcomes of the external review panel, highlighting engineering, policy, and organizational failures. The report further discusses recommended best practices, engineering ethics implemented, and the ethical responsibilities during recovery. It concludes by exploring corporate responsibilities, competencies required, and the challenges faced during the disaster, providing valuable insights for engineers and policymakers on improving disaster preparedness and response. The report is designed to help students understand the importance of ethical considerations and innovation in engineering, especially in the context of natural disasters.

Running Head: ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS
Engineering Innovation and ethics
Student’s Name
Institution

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 2
i. Introduction
Among the many catastrophic naturally occurring events that hit the USA, is hurricane Katrina.
There had been 65 hurricanes that made landfall in the USA with category three strengths or
higher from the year 1900 to 2000. However, hurricane Katrina is unique for various reasons. To
begin with, the intensity of hurricane Katrina was overwhelming in that its winds’ force stretched
103 miles from its epicenter with a tropical 230 miles storm force winds. Additionally, the
hurricane had an enormous storm surge exceeding a 30 feet height in different places down the
Gulf Coast as well as inland. This was too much for the leeves that protected the city, leading to
an 80% New Orleans city flooding. Ultimately, the flooding destroyed homes, damaged
property, dragged 118,000,000 cubic debris yard, killed and displaced people. Comparing
hurricane Katrina and hurricane Andrew produces the figure below (Richardson, Park, Moore, &
Pan, 2014).

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 3
ii. Overview of the Disaster hurricane Katrina United State 2005
Katrina’s strength increased to category three on August 27, with circulation and top winds
covering virtually the whole of Mexico’s Gulf. Getting to August 29, the storm grew to category
4 making landfall at Plaquemines Parish (Brown, 2015).
New Orleans got spared from direct intense winds from the storm but had its leeves that hold
back Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain waters completely overwhelmed. The first flooding
areas were found east of the Industrial Canal (King, 2016). Numerous inhabitants would not or
could not leave and when it reached August 30, 80% of the city was submerged in water. Most of
the local agencies would not react to the worsening situation (Hinderliter & McVeigh, 2015).

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 4
The figures above show the areas submerged in water and the hurricane Katrina’s movement
respectively (Ledbetter, 2015).
Reaching August 31, batches of evacuees landed at the shelters put up by Red Cross. Henceforth,
potable water and food became scarce. The public health emergency worsened with the lack of
basic sanitation. September 2 marked the military involvement in the city as well as the troops
from the National Guard who distributed water and food (Powelson, 2017). The hurricane
victims were still being evacuated while crews started reconstructing the leeves that gave way.
This marked a major step towards recovery whereby other nations came in to give a hand in
delivering supplies and food (Pratt, 2016). On October 11, army troops helped to pump the
remaining floodwaters from the city. Ultimately, the storm damaged property and reduced the
city’s population below 29% (Freed, 2015).

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 5
The figure above shows the army troops’ patrol.
iii. The effect of the Hurricane
a. Effect on Human Life
 Insecurity.
Lack of access to social amenities meant rampant looting (Zullo, 2015).
 Poverty
Katrina’s victim mostly had low wages and a big percentage of them went through the
hardship of losing their homes.
 Loss of life
New Orleans’ population dropped by greater than half its previous population due to
Katrina.
 Homelessness
People from the affected area lacked housing and getting their lives back to track became
a major issue (Taylor, Levine, Rooksby, & Sobott, 2015).
b. Effect on the Environment on the Region

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 6
 Potable water
Sanitation and public health service professionals monitored the quality of water being
careful to give health warnings when need be.
 Vector control
Flies and mosquitoes had to be controlled using pesticides.
 Waste disposal
Debris and solid waste were distributed and were to be removed, taken away and
disposed of accordingly (Fothergill & Peek, 2015).
 Wastewater system
The wastewater collection system had to be renovated and reconfigured.
 Air quality
The indoor air had to be monitored as the proper public’s health information on
businesses and homes were provided.
c. Effect on the economy of the region
Consequences to the city’s economy for example loss of uninsured property by flooding was
devastating. However, also the insured persons suffered since the New Orleans policy coverage
was not sufficient for covering household contents or home loss (Chen & Rose, 2018).
Almost half of New Orleans’ housing units were rentals, looking at the census done in 2000.
Therefore, renters had to find new housing. In addition, most of the residents were poor with
very low rents to the pay-lesser number of such individuals were able to come back to New
Orleans due to the escalated rents prevailing the undamaged or reconstructed city dwellings
(Lincove & Strunk, 2018).
iv. Formation of the external review panel

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 7
a. Reasons
Setting up the panel paved way for evaluation of the New Orleans hurricane protection systems.
Therefore, there was a resulting creation for a better understanding of what went south and why.
Moreover, the panel had the responsibility of sharing its insights and findings to create an
opportunity for others to learn from such tragedy.
b. Outcomes of the report
The risks within New Orleans were not effectively communicated to its public thus making the
protection and evacuation of people to be under-estimated. Also, the city’s hurricane protection
system lacked strong interconnected portioned systems whereby sum pump stations succumbed
to the hurricane’s forces while the leeves’ designs failed, overtopping (Clow, Haworth-
Brockman, Boily-Larouche, Qadar, & Keynan, 2019).
What shocks is the absence of one agency to be in charge of the New Orleans hurricane
protection system. Rather, the pump stations and leeves operation and maintenance responsibility
were spread. Inter-agency coordination lacked leading to Hurricane Katrina's adverse
consequences part from the poor funding of the system (Ferreira & Figley, 2018).
c. Engineering, policies and organizational failures
 The New Orleans risk was never appreciate
Before the occurrence of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the probable risk had never been
fully quantified. Hence the understanding of policymakers and planners was very slim leading to
the implementation of unsuitable standards (Wright, Resio, & Nichols, 2019).
 The Hurricane Protection System created piecemeal

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 8
The protection systems during the southeast Louisiana Hurricane were the disorganized
collection of independent projects which were created and conceived in a piecemeal manner and
never substantiated.
 The process of funding was interfered with
The budgeting process of Congress led to irregularity in the funding stream towards the
protection system in New Orleans. Other factors like reliability, safety and quality always
comprise solution although low costs and tradeoff pressures have a great impact.
 The under-designed protection system
A standard hurricane project must meet some reasonable features according to the USACE. It,
therefore, means that SPH is not an intense hurricane situation. The protection systems, in this
case, did not have enough strength to sustain the Hurricane Katrina forces.
 Lack of peer review from outside
Doubtable external peer review was done on a few protection system projects in New Orleans
thus poor engineering decisions were made. Therefore the big failure in safeguarding the public
from extreme water project resources failure.
 Lack of a central entity responsible for hurricane protection
There are failures and chaos in regards to hurricane protection system control. There was no
formal structure to offer strategic instructions, operations and the coordination of technical
construction (Hinderliter & McVeigh, 2015).
d. Best practices recommended
 Periodical update and quantification of risk assessment data.

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 9
 Allocate a licensed person or one entity the role of controlling the protection systems in
case of catastrophic flood and hurricanes, for example, the New Orleans one.
 Prioritize keeping the public safe.
 Involve individual expertise in critical review of high-level structures of saving a life
including the protection system for floods and hurricanes (Ferreira & Figley, 2018).
Engineering Ethics in the account of Hurricane Katrina disaster
Shortcomings experienced during the hurricane Katrina occasioned the following engineering
ethics to be implemented:
 Involve individual experts
Entities in charge of constructing high-level structures of life safety must involve individual
experts in the critical review of any project.
 Improve the mechanisms of engineering design
The newest technological developments should be applied to boost the maintenance, designs,
models and retrofits of hurricane protection systems.
 Prioritize safety
Engineering groups should strengthen the requirement to put the public’s welfare, health and
safety first and highly prioritized (Taylor, Levine, Rooksby, & Sobott, 2015).
e. Recovering from the hurricane Katrina
a. Aim/objectives
 Determine how the public should be involved in the process of the recovery plan

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 10
 Recognize future vision for restoration found on lessons from the hurricane
 Creating the leading responsibility for engineers in regards to facilitation and
coordination
b. Ethical responsibilities
 Appreciate the risk and accept safety
Communities around risky areas should have an understanding and appreciate the risks they live
with and observe safety as the first priority. They should also talk about the quantifiable risks
involved (Wright, Resio, & Nichols, 2019).
 Fix and re-evaluate hurricane protection systems
The New Orleans’ major line of defence concerning the hurricane protection systems includes
floodwalls and levees to contain intense waters resulting from a storm gush however it failed
terribly. The systems must be re-evaluated including the use of land in New Orleans (Clow,
Haworth-Brockman, Boily-Larouche, Qadar, & Keynan, 2019).
 The management of Hurricane protection systems should be improved
The management of the hurricane protection systems in New Orleans failed because of too many
management groups participation. There was no specific individual or entity responsible. Inter-
agency cooperation and coordination have to be strengthened and a personal or entity placed in
charge (Ledbetter, 2015).
f. Corporate responsibilities and recovery efforts

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 11
Every business during the hurricane Katrina prioritized in the accountability of their employees’
wellbeing and health in the places affected and assessed the incurred damage on their operations
and facilities. Companies also offered the affected employees to access the relief programs from
the non-governmental bodies and the government.
Business entities contributed substantial amounts of money, services and products towards the
hurricane Katrina aid effort. All companies planned for employee donations kit and sent their
employees to communities affected by the hurricane and to voluntary organizations.
g. Competencies details
 Are we prepared?
It is important to reassess entities properly to determine if they are ready for any risks reasonably
foreseeable in all the organization levels. This should not be from the view of data technology
recovery.
 How should the disaster drills be assessed?
The success of an entity can result from the effort of specific individuals, therefore, every
employee at all levels of the entity must understand their responsibilities in the continuity of the
business and disaster recovery plan (Fothergill & Peek, 2015).
 How much preparation or planning is sufficient?
Try to reconsider the scope and frequency of testing mechanisms in the future to include full-
scale and working drill tests for disasters to all support works.
 How to communicate

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 12
Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that a catastrophic disaster can interfere with communication
services. However, companies can develop alternative means for communicating and locating
customers and employees (Ferreira & Figley, 2018).
 What transportation means should be considered as alternatives?
Companies should look for alternative transport means or create mechanisms to transport and
shift employees from impacted areas.
 Where is every other person?
Choose an alternative gathering area of priority for employees to gather to be used by employees
when they cannot access their allocated location after a disaster (Freed, 2015).
h. Challenges faced
Factors such as transparency, accessibility to the survey and personalization made it impossible
to seek confidential information. The element of personalization is past customization.
Contextual features such as affiliation or the identity of the researcher also have an impact on the
outcome of the research. The research structure may equally affect the speed of acquiring data.
Due to many sources in the internet containing irrelevant data which greatly impacted on the
speed of research (Ferreira & Figley, 2018).
i. Strategies to overcome challenges
Developing the need for community headway by the review team facilitated transparency and
access to the inaccessible and confidential data. The structure of particular questions should be
done away with at the initial stage of research to save time. It is also important to target a

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 13
specific community so as to boost transparency and accessibility. Using keywords aided in
highlighting helpful content from the internet (Chen & Rose, 2018).
j. Conclusion
What the external review panel did was courageous in that the panel looked into the reasons for
the disastrous outcome with remarkable visibility. USACE was able to take control
appropriately. Additionally, the USACE had earned a commendation for the professional and
constructive review due to the marvelous efforts in pulling together figures, manuscripts and
photographs in composing the technical report. The panel had considerable skills in using the
engineering ethics when recommending and explaining the events that added to things going
wrong when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and why focusing on the hurricane protection
system (Ferreira & Figley, 2018).
The team of engineers, about 150, labored to provide meaningful data for rebuilding and
protecting New Orleans from identical hurricanes and flooding. Hence, it is an honor to have and
see the application of engineering ethics when producing comprehensive, competitive analysis
and evaluation that had critical lessons learnt and important findings (Lincove & Strunk, 2018).

ENGINEERING INNOVATION AND ETHICS 14
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