Consequences of Flooding: Understanding and Estimating Potential Loss of Life

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Explore the latest research and methods from the US Army Corps of Engineers on how to estimate consequences of flooding, with a focus on potential loss of life. Participants will gain an understanding of what causes loss of life during a flood event and how to estimate the potential loss of life for different flood scenarios.

Participants in this webinar will be able to:

1) identify the driving factors that lead to loss of life, or lack thereof during a flood event

2) describe the essential elements that must be considered when estimating potential loss of life from flooding

3) Identify common methods for assessing each of the essential elements that inform a life loss estimate

4) Identify the sources of uncertainty in life loss estimates and summarize how uncertainty is portrayed in the estimate.

2 PDHs

Jason Needham

Senior Consequence Specialist

US Army Corps of Engineers

Jason Needham is the senior Consequence Specialist for the USACE Risk Management Center (RMC). He holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from New Mexico State University, an M.S. degree in Engineering from the University of California at Davis, and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of California. Jason specializes in risk analysis and consequence estimation, and he leads the USACE research and development efforts focused on understanding the potential loss of life from flooding.

He has been a practicing Hydraulic Engineering and flood-related consequence estimation for over 20 years. Five of those years were with David Ford Consulting in Sacramento, CA where he worked with industry standard hydrologic and hydraulic software programs and developed and installed flood warning systems for various groups. Six years were with the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) in Davis, CA where he led development of HEC-FIA, including adding the ability to perform GIS-based calculations and estimate potential loss of life from flooding. He transferred to the RMC 10 years ago where he continues to be involved in guiding research, development and application of the consequence estimation tools in support of risk assessments. He also is a lead developer of the USACE Levee Screening Tool and vice chair for the USACE Levee Senior Oversight Group.