(soft resonating music) (logo whooshes)
- [Narrator] Together, the individual ports
along the Texas coast move more cargo than any other state.
They provide direct and indirect employment,
supplying 450 billion dollars in state economic activity.
So, when hurricanes and other extreme weather events
hit the state, our port system, and, therefore our economy,
can be adversely affected.
Is our port system resilient?
Can the measures that are in place now be improved?
- TXDOT really wanted to know,
how can we improve operations?
What do we need to do better to help a port
get back into operations sooner?
And, obviously, hurricane impacts not just the port,
but large areas around and TXDOT must come in
and move all the debris, get roads open back up,
enable emergency workers to access the port,
if necessary, or surrounding areas,
block off areas where they've got damaged roadways
or flooding and make sure that no one goes down that route.
And so, TXDOT does a lot of different things,
the maintenance aspect, the emergency response.
- We believe this is a time we have to seriously look into
the resilience of our post systems.
And, in addition to the ports themselves
and also we have to look into the supporting infrastructure.
For example, highways, railroads, pipelines,
and even, to a degree, the electric power grid,
because they are all connected with each other.
- Part of what we were doing was obtaining data,
conducting interviews, workshops, surveys
to gather this information
and then to help develop a tool that could help ports
and TXDOT measured the resilience
and the economic impact of an event.
- So they can use the tool to assess the resilience
of the system and to identify areas for improvement
and so that they can make better investment decisions.
- What this tool does is evaluates how resourceful are you
as a port in handling these kinds of conditions.
And it eventually will give them
a score in terms of
their robustness, redundancy,
their rapidity, and their resourcefulness.
- Personal research findings,
we develop 33 recommendations
and for the legislature,
and for the port authorities,
and also for Texas Department of Transportation, to act on.
- TXDOT has a lot of functions it performs
in keeping the public safe and the more it understands
about what the port itself is doing
and what the port needs, the better it can do its job.
- [Narrator] For more information,
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TXDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.