Hurricane center director, top NOAA official to speak at meeting

February 1, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The new director of the National Hurricane Center and a top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are among the speakers at a University of Florida meeting set for Tuesday.

Bill Proenza, who recently succeeded Max Mayfield as the hurricane center’s director, and Margaret Davidson, director of the NOAA Coastal Service Center, will speak Tuesday morning at the “Coastal Hazards and Infrastructure” meeting at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center. The meeting is the ninth in a series of meetings organized by the Florida Coastal Ocean Observing Systems Caucus, a public-private partnership dedicated to the protection and preservation of Florida’s coast and oceans.

The goal of the meeting is to bring together scientists, federal officials, local emergency mangers and private sector groups such as insurers to better manage and coordinate hurricane response, said Peter Sheng, a UF professor of civil and coastal engineering and the lead organizer of the Gainesville meeting.

“We’re forging a partnership among these four groups with the goal of improving our capacity to recover and respond from hurricanes,” said Sheng, an expert in modeling and predicting hurricane storm surge.

Proenza will discuss how the National Hurricane Center plans to tap university research for operational activities, while Davidson will talk about NOAA’s ocean observing systems and storm modeling and prediction research. Other speakers and presenters include representatives of the Florida Department of Emergency Management, a researcher at Louisiana State University who will discuss the response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as UF’s Sheng and civil and coastal engineering Professor Bob Dean.

Davidson is scheduled to speak at 9:35 a.m. followed by Proenza at 10:05 a.m. A full program is available at http://www.marine.usf.edu/flcoos/fcc9.html.