Flood protection meets climate action: SSPEED Center’s annual conference maps a path to resilient communities

Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center convened more than 100 experts, industry leaders and attendees Nov. 6-7 for its 12th annual conference, connecting cutting-edge flood mitigation with the fast-emerging world of market-based natural carbon solutions.

Hosted at Rice’s Anderson-Clarke Center, the meeting was deliberately split into two distinct but deeply linked days. The first day of the conference focused on major infrastructure, nature-based flood strategies and real-time lessons from this summer’s devastating Hill Country flood. The following day’s topics turned to natural climate solutions and the carbon market, tools that can channel private capital into land stewardship, coastal protection and methane abatement while reinforcing long-term flood resilience.

“We organized the program around four big thrusts we’ve advanced for years,” said Philip Bedient, director of the SSPEED Center and the Herman and George R. Brown Professor of Engineering at Rice. “Galveston Bay Park Plan, nature-based solutions, Harris County’s MaapNext floodplain modeling and hard-won lessons from the Hill Country flood — getting all of that into one day is ambitious, but it’s exactly these conversations Houston and Texas need.”

The conference opened with updates on the Galveston Bay Park Plan, a regional surge and flood-mitigation concept SSPEED has refined since 2016 with architects, engineers and public partners. Sessions led by Rogers Partners, Jim Blackburn and Rice engineer Avantika Gori charted how design, advanced modeling and governance are converging as the region invests in layered coastal protection.

Nature-based flood solutions followed, featuring Dutch and Rice experts on green infrastructure that slows, stores and soaks stormwater across neighborhoods, counties and watersheds.

“What used to be called ‘low-impact development’ has matured into nature-based solutions, and we’ve become leaders in the field — working with researchers, students and practitioners to actually build these systems,” said Blackburn, professor in the practice of environmental law at Rice and co-director of the SSPEED Center.

A highlight was Harris County Flood Control District’s preview of MaapNext (Modeling, Assessment and Awareness Project), a next-generation, countywide 2D floodplain modeling effort expected to change how risk is mapped and mitigated.

“Bringing Harris County leadership to campus to discuss MaapNext matters,” Bedient said. “These are the people who can implement change in one of the most flood-prone cities in the United States.”

Recognizing the urgency of extreme rainfall beyond Houston, the program also examined the July 4 Hill Country flood, which struck the Guadalupe River Basin with astonishing speed and intensity. University of Texas at Arlington’s Nick Fang and Jacob Torres shared advances in flood warning and monitoring, while a poster session convened the teams running the region’s flood-warning system.

“To have a big conference and not address the Guadalupe flood would be a mistake,” Bedient said. “We’re tackling it head-on to accelerate practical improvements.”

Equally important, the first day threaded engineering with social science and community partnership. Rice scholars Jim Elliott and Dominic Boyer discussed the university’s new Creative Ventures-supported outreach with residents affected in the basin.

“If you don’t have buy-in from communities, you’re wasting your time,” Bedient said. “We’re blending engineering with social impact because implementation is where resilience succeeds or fails.”

Bedient also pointed to collaborations seeded during the meeting: “We’ve got the city of Houston, Harris County, the Port of Houston and state partners here — people who can take research and turn it into projects. There are real opportunities with UT-Arlington, and we’re building new ties with Texas Tech’s meteorology group to pair advanced weather analysis with our hydrology and infrastructure work.”

The conference’s second day showcased how natural systems can store carbon and strengthen resilience with sessions spanning soil carbon on working lands, forest carbon, coastal “blue carbon” and methane abatement via orphan-well plugging. It also traced how carbon markets and registries, like BCarbon, incubated in collaboration with Rice and its Baker Institute for Public Policy, help landowners, companies and communities monetize stewardship.

“The second day was about market-based natural carbon solutions,” said Chris Ordoñez, program manager for nature-based solutions at the SSPEED Center. “We brought together the market architects, the scientists and the project developers in one intimate space to learn from each other and form long-term partnerships.”

Ordoñez emphasized the scientific backbone of the agenda: “Soils are tremendous carbon stores — native grasses pull carbon from the air and move it into the ground for durable storage. Our biochar keynote with Rice’s Carrie Masiello highlighted a fast-growing approach that locks carbon into a stable form while improving soil health and water retention. It’s one of those win-wins where you can store carbon and support sustainable agriculture.”

Beyond Texas, SSPEED and partners discussed work in Tamaulipas, Mexico, where teams are helping develop protocols for nature-based credits and piloting on-the-ground projects. Sessions also examined the methane market and practical steps to plug abandoned and orphaned wells, actions that generate credits while delivering immediate climate and public-safety benefits.

Amid skepticism about climate solutions, Ordoñez voiced reasons for resolve. “There’s plenty of pessimism out there, but Earth already gives us the best tools we have right now,” he said. “We won’t meet our climate goals without carbon removal, and nature is our most readily deployable pathway today.”

Houston’s long history with hurricanes and extreme rainfall has taught a clear lesson: Resilience is not one project or one agency but rather a portfolio that blends engineered protection, watershed wide green infrastructure, community partnership and policy and market mechanisms that mobilize investment at scale. In that sense, the conference functioned less as a symposium than a launchpad to align infrastructure, ecology and economics to help communities thrive in a wetter, warmer century.