President Wayne Clough is heading a national committee working toward the reconstruction of New Orleans and protection of the city from future hurricanes.

Clough led the first meeting of the National Academies/National Research Council's 16-member Committee on New Orleans Regional Hurricane Protection Projects in mid-January, when the group had the opportunity to tour the areas hardest hit during the 2005 hurricane season and inspect levee and floodwall failures.

He said the committee's primary focus will be to review the work being conducted by the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with a team from the American Society of Civil Engineers that is investigating the design capacity of the hurricane protection system, forces exerted against the system and the factors that resulted in the breaching of levees and floodwalls.

Joseph Hughes, chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, told former trustees of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association during a January reunion that it will be years before New Orleans is protected from a hurricane of Katrina's strength.

He called the damage in New Orleans alone "absolutely staggering. There's nothing that was on television or that I can show you that comes close to expressing the extent of damage that took place."

At the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Georgia Tech Research Institute is evaluating the feasibility of using its plasma furnace system to dispose of the tremendous volume of debris in the Gulf Coast region.

Other civil and environmental engineering professors and their research teams also have been working in the hard-hit areas.

Professor Glenn Rix is determining the link between physical damage from Hurricane Katrina and the operational capacity and recovery of Gulf Coast ports. Professor David Frost is analyzing wind and storm surge damage data to help define a zone that is potentially subject to certain types of damage.

In addition, associate professor Reggie DesRoches gathered data on damage inflicted on bridges and the transportation network that could help improve infrastructure design and rehabilitation.

Over winter break, 46 Tech students and three staff members spent five days in Mobile, Ala., helping residents clean up their flood-damaged homes.