Quantitative Analysis of Hurricane Harvey Impacts on Texas Maritime Facilities

As extreme weather events increase in frequency and intensity with the effects of climate change, it is paramount to understand the impacts on- and resilience of critical infrastructure systems when confronted with natural disasters such as hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey disrupted port operations in the Houston, TX region in 2017, forcing the Port of Houston to close for a week and subsequently disrupting the operations and recovery of local industries. This study quantified the impacts of Hurricane Harvey on actual vessel movements in the Houston region, using data extracted from the automatic identification system. Data sets from 2016 and 2017 were employed to provide comparisons between a period of assumed “typical” operations and a period of disruption from Hurricane Harvey. The impacts were statistically analyzed using the metrics of net vessel count (NVC) and dwell time distribution, and the analysis was performed at Barbour’s Cut Container Terminal and the Houston Pass anchorage area. Results indicate that NVC experienced perturbations in both the container terminal and the general anchorage area. Statistically significant increases in dwell time were detected for both study locations, indicating that Hurricane Harvey created longer service and queuing times at both the port and anchorage scale. Although the study provides a quantitative postdisaster assessment of the impacts of Hurricane Harvey on port operations, the methods and metrics detailed in this paper could be applied to other ports for assessing the impacts of a disruption on their operations using publicly available data sets.