ABOVE: Bishop James Dixon, Cynthia Lenton-Gary, Mayor Sylvester Turner, and attendee at HCC breakfast
Includes a Resilience Center of Excellence and Nation’s Largest High-Water Rescue Training Facility
At their recent State of the College event held at the Hilton Americas, Houston Community College (HCC) unveiled plans for the region’s most comprehensive program designed to mitigate the impact of catastrophic events and other unexpected disasters.
HCC’s Resiliency Initiative, announced by Chancellor Cesar Maldonado, Ph.D., P.E., includes a new interdisciplinary resiliency curriculum for citizens and communities, while real-world simulation exercises for thousands of responders from across the region and nation will occur at a new training facility.
Five years in the making with input from first responders, government agencies and business leaders, the college’s initiative includes the Resiliency Center of Excellence created to reduce casualties, property damage and economic loss caused by floods, tornados, snow and ice, spills and fires, power grid failures, and other disasters.
“This is about building a resilience-oriented community for the future,” said Dr. Maldonado. “Anyone involved in protecting health and the safety of places and people—whether in the private or public sector—can benefit from the training and corresponding curriculum.”
Courses in Resiliency: Future Proofing Citizens, Communities, and Companies
Starting this summer, courses for large employers and small businesses will examine hyper-local supply chain challenges, coordinating preparedness and response strategic partnerships, and addressing challenges in construction, facilities, local infrastructure, communications and information, and disaster case management support.
HCC has been guided by insights from private, philanthropic, and public sector interests in pre-disaster and risk-mitigated preparedness across residential, commercial, industrial, and civic facilities and infrastructure. Creating new resilience-oriented credentials and continuing education programs aligned with project management, teambuilding, business continuity, regulatory compliance, simulation and scenario training-the-trainers, the Resiliency Center of Excellence draws from faculty, subject matter experts, and other resources across the region and around the United States.
Classes for individuals will cover topics such as assessing risks, investments in preparedness, leveraging local and regional programs, the role and value of insurance, and supporting neighbors and the community. A full-course curriculum is available at hccs.edu/embracing-resiliency.
The Resiliency Operations Center (ROC)
The focal point of the initiative is a $30-million Resiliency Operations Center (ROC) where the area’s first responders—police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical—can train in simulations of flooded residential streets with floating debris, downed power lines and submerged vehicles, a streetscape with mock training buildings, swift water rescue channel, and a lake with shallow and deep-water areas. Plans call for the center to operate year-round regardless of weather, to replicate as many scenarios as possible.
Planned for HCC’s Northeast Campus, near the East Freeway and Loop 610, the five-acre ROC training and simulation complex will leverage ongoing courses from the co-located Centers of Excellence in Public Safety, Transportation, and Global Energy.
When not reserved for regional or national teams of first responders, the ROC will be available for medical triage workers, linemen responsible for handling downed power lines, construction workers retrofitting buildings with the latest technologies, drone operators, and managers of public water systems and large manufacturing facilities, including the area’s petrochemical plants.
The center’s water course was designed by whitewater engineers S20 and its European partner EDP. Buildings at the center were designed by Huitt-Zollars. The overall project manager is mStrategic Partners. Final engineering plans are expected to be completed in September with build-out estimated at 18-22 months.
Why Houston Community College?
Dr. Maldonado said the Resilience Center of Excellence is a natural extension of HCC’s existing 14 Centers of Excellence which provide customized training to meet industry needs.
Through a “One College-One Community” approach, HCC continuing education, entrepreneurial programs, small business outreach, and corporate industry-responsive programs support upskilling of the current workforce, while educating the future workforce in critical areas of resilience (construction, medical services, facility operations, and more than 40 other job categories).
“Developing a resilient workforce is part of our role as Houston’s community college,” Dr. Maldonado added.
The college’s announcement comes as the 2022 hurricane season quickly approaches.
According to the Harris County Flood Control District, a major flood occurs somewhere in the county every two years.
Most notably, the area was struck by Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, the Memorial Day flood of 2015, the Tax Day flood of 2016, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, a record-setting storm which flooded 200,000 homes and 500,000 cars while causing $73.5 billion in property destruction and loss of output.