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Disaster Autopsy Model is an award-winning Louisiana State University landscape-architecture analysis and planning project about the August 2016 flooding in East Baton Rouge Parish. It is not a forensic procedure, software product, or completed public-works scheme. Donguk Lee and Xiwei Shen documented the disaster, interpreted why the landscape and institutions were overwhelmed, and proposed a coordinated “BTR Blue Network,” vacant-land flood buffers, community stewardship tools, and public education. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) listed the work as a 2017 Student Awards Honor Award in Analysis & Planning, with Cathy Marshall as faculty advisor.
What the Disaster Autopsy Model is—and is not
The title uses “autopsy” as a design-analysis metaphor: examine a disaster after it occurs, identify the interacting failures and conditions, then use that evidence to reshape future decisions. Lee and Shen’s subject was the intense rainfall and flooding that affected East Baton Rouge Parish from August 8 through 14, 2016.
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The project is a student proposal documented in an ASLA award entry. The reviewed material does not establish that its pipes, bioswales, levees, weirs, reservoir, monitoring towers, or beacon network were built, operated, or evaluated after construction. Any description of those elements should therefore be read as a proposed planning framework, not as a performance report.
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How Lee and Shen studied the 2016 flood
The team combined direct observation with testimony and visual analysis rather than treating rainfall as an isolated engineering number. Their stated methods included:
- Site observation in affected parts of East Baton Rouge Parish.
- Video and photographic documentation of water movement, damage, and local conditions.
- Interviews with people who experienced the flooding.
- Maps and diagrams showing event timing, contributing factors, impacts, and relative magnitude.
The resulting narrative connects infrastructure, land development, and local culture. The authors argue that intense rainfall flooding received less public recognition than a named hurricane, even when consequences were severe. They also interpret the event through cultural memory, political will, and funding decisions. Those are interpretations advanced by the student project, not independent findings established here.
The 1983 comparison
The project states that an identical storm flooded Baton Rouge in 1983. Lee and Shen use the recurrence to question why the later event did not produce a stronger preventive response, pointing to fading memory, political priorities, and the difficulty of securing funds for measures that are invisible when no flood is occurring. Their analysis also says the 2016 rainfall exceeded design standards and overwhelmed the landscape’s capacity to absorb impacts.
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What the project says about the scale of flooding
Several striking figures appear in the project narrative. They need precise attribution because the ASLA award page presents the student team’s figures without a primary statistical dataset alongside them.
| Figure | How it is presented | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| 7.1 trillion gallons | The project estimates this volume fell over the East Baton Rouge area during the August 2016 event and compares it with three times the water volume of Hurricane Katrina. | Reported by the Disaster Autopsy Model narrative in the 2017 ASLA Student Awards listing; not independently validated here. |
| More than half of parish homes | The project says more than half of East Baton Rouge Parish homes flooded. | Student-project figure; the award page does not provide a primary statistical dataset with it. |
| 12.5% insured | The project says 12.5% of affected homes had flood insurance. | Student-project figure; it should not be generalized to all Louisiana floods or all forms of insurance. |
| More than 7 trillion gallons statewide | Louisiana’s Phase 1 watershed program report says more than 7 trillion gallons of rainwater fell on the state in 2016. | Different geographic scope from the East Baton Rouge estimate; the two numbers must not be combined. |
| More than 31 inches | The same state report records more than 31 inches of rain in parts of Livingston Parish. | Parish-specific context, not a measurement for every location in East Baton Rouge. |
For builders, planners, and property owners, the practical lesson is not to treat one headline number as a complete design basis. A project must identify the drainage area, recurrence assumptions, ground elevations, soil conditions, and applicable local requirements before sizing any intervention.
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The proposed BTR Blue Network
The proposal’s main infrastructure concept, called the BTR Blue Network, would connect scattered ponds and existing water infrastructure instead of leaving each basin to function in isolation. The proposed network combines:
- Above-ground and below-ground piping to move water between locations.
- Bioswales to slow, filter, and infiltrate runoff where site conditions permit.
- Levees and weirs to guide or regulate flows.
- A flood-monitoring system that would observe changing conditions.
- An overflow reservoir near the confluence of the Amite and Comite Rivers.
In concept, the network treats water storage, conveyance, filtration, and controlled overflow as one connected system. A pond, swale, pipe, or weir is not presented as a stand-alone cure; each is part of a larger blue infrastructure layer that can receive water from one area and provide capacity or treatment elsewhere.
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Lee and Shen describe linking flood monitoring to existing and proposed towers. The towers are assigned several proposed functions: real-time feedback, power, wayfinding, and emergency-beacon capability, while also supporting everyday networking and lighting. These descriptions indicate a dual-use strategy—ordinary civic infrastructure that can become a warning and coordination system during a flood.
The sources do not verify that the towers exist, transmit operational data, maintain backup power, or provide emergency communications. A construction team would need separate decisions about sensors, communications reliability, electrical resilience, accessibility, inspection, and agency ownership before treating the concept as an executable system.
Flood Buffers: using vacant land as working infrastructure
The Flood Buffer concept uses vacant or underused land to filter runoff and reduce exposure while creating visible public value. The proposal groups treatments according to context rather than prescribing one universal detail.
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| Context identified in the proposal | Intended role | Design emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Western warehouse and vacant-lot areas | Use fragmented industrial or vacant parcels to intercept and filter runoff. | Connect parcels to the broader drainage network and account for hard surfaces and access requirements. |
| Park nodes and suburban vacant homes or lots | Create distributed storage, planting, and neighborhood-scale water features. | Make installations safe, maintainable, and understandable to residents. |
| Community or tourist-oriented water-awareness uses | Turn flood infrastructure into places where people can see and learn how water moves. | Combine public access and interpretation with hydraulic function. |
The project also proposes educational installations that reveal normally hidden drainage elements, including culverts, catch basins, canals, and related sites. Making these systems legible can help residents recognize where water is supposed to go, what can obstruct it, and why routine stewardship matters.
Three overlapping response areas
Rather than relying on one flood-control structure, the proposal divides action into three overlapping areas.
1. Emergency-event infrastructure
This area covers the physical and technological systems intended to perform during a flood: connected conveyance, storage, monitoring, overflow management, towers, and emergency beacons. Its scale is regional or inter-neighborhood, and its success would depend on hydraulic continuity, reliable power, communications, and clear operating responsibility.
2. Community-toolkit guidance
The community toolkit addresses personal stewardship. It frames residents, landowners, and local organizations as participants who can maintain planting areas, keep drainage paths clear, understand warning information, and make everyday choices that affect runoff. The project does not provide a costed maintenance program or a single required household product; it proposes guidance as a complement to capital infrastructure.
3. Education through runoff filtration and public awareness
The educational area uses visible filtration landscapes and interpretive installations to explain stormwater. A bioswale, canal edge, catch basin, or culvert can become both a functional component and a teaching opportunity. This approach is intended to improve public understanding of ordinary rain events, not only dramatic named storms.
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How the 2016 event shaped the design proposal
The flood influenced the proposal in four connected ways:
- It exposed a visibility problem. Rainfall flooding can be difficult to perceive as a single regional event when it arrives without a hurricane’s name or a widely recognized track. The project responds by making water movement and warning systems more visible.
- It revealed the limits of isolated assets. Scattered ponds, drainage structures, and developed parcels can be overwhelmed when they are not coordinated. The BTR Blue Network responds with proposed connections among storage, conveyance, and monitoring.
- It highlighted land-development patterns. Warehouses, paved areas, suburban lots, vacant parcels, and river corridors contribute different runoff and access conditions. Flood Buffers assign different landscape strategies to those contexts.
- It raised a question about memory and investment. The project’s comparison with the 1983 flood argues that recurrence alone does not guarantee preparation. Long-term resilience requires institutions and communities to retain knowledge and sustain funding between events.
Construction and planning implications
Although Disaster Autopsy Model is not a construction specification, its structure suggests a disciplined way to translate a broad resilience vision into buildable work.
Start with a verified site and drainage model
Before selecting a pipe, swale, levee, or reservoir location, confirm the contributing watershed, existing outfalls, easements, utility conflicts, flood elevations, soils, groundwater, and regulatory constraints. The project’s regional diagrams are conceptual; they do not replace survey, hydrologic, hydraulic, geotechnical, or permitting work.
Design connections, not isolated features
A bioswale that cannot safely overflow, a pond without an accessible outlet, or a weir without an inspection route can transfer risk rather than reduce it. Each proposed component should have a defined upstream inflow, downstream condition, overflow path, maintenance access, and responsible owner.
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Plan maintenance as part of construction
Plant establishment, sediment removal, trash control, culvert inspection, channel mowing or ecological management, gate or weir inspection, and sensor calibration all affect performance. The student proposal emphasizes stewardship, but it does not publish maintenance frequencies, staffing levels, or operating budgets. Those must be established locally before construction.
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Separate normal and emergency functions
Dual-use towers and public installations can provide lighting, networking, wayfinding, and flood alerts, but emergency performance requires dedicated power, communications redundancy, accessible controls, testing, and a named operator. Everyday convenience should not be mistaken for verified disaster readiness.
Build in phases that can be measured
A practical program could begin with site verification and pilot flood-buffer parcels, then connect priority drainage segments, add monitoring, and expand toward larger storage or overflow works. Each phase should define measurable outcomes—such as available storage, conveyance continuity, inspection completion, warning reach, or post-storm response time—without claiming that the original student project tested those metrics.
What the award does and does not establish
- It establishes that ASLA recognized the project with a 2017 Student Awards Honor Award in Analysis & Planning.
- It identifies Donguk Lee and Xiwei Shen as student authors from Louisiana State University and Cathy Marshall as faculty advisor.
- It documents an analysis of the August 2016 East Baton Rouge flooding using observation, media, interviews, maps, and diagrams.
- It presents the BTR Blue Network, Flood Buffer, beacon, toolkit, and education concepts as proposed responses.
- It does not establish construction completion, operating performance, post-construction testing, project cost, or a comparison with built alternatives.
ASLA’s awards jury described the work as “Strong analysis of the flooding impacts… This project breaks the problem down to little vignettes to give you a sense of how it plays out on the ground.” The comment explains the project’s communicative strength: it moves between regional systems and small, lived situations without claiming that a single intervention solves every condition.
Why the model matters to construction readers
Construction decisions often divide responsibilities among civil works, landscape, utilities, buildings, public agencies, and property owners. Disaster Autopsy Model is useful because it asks those systems to be read together. Its central contribution is not a ready-made detail or a guaranteed technology; it is a framework for turning observations from a flood into coordinated places, infrastructure, and public practices.
For a contractor or owner, that means asking four questions at the beginning of a resilience project: Where does water come from? Where can it safely be stored or treated? Who will inspect and operate each link? How will residents understand and support the system? Those questions are consistent with the proposal’s combined emphasis on emergency infrastructure, community stewardship, and education, while leaving engineering and legal decisions to qualified local professionals.
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