A large portion of the destruction from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was caused not only by the storm itself but also by the storm’s exposure of engineering and engineering-related policy failures. ASCE’s Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel, which was convened at the request of Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, then the commander and chief engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to conduct an in-depth peer review of the comprehensive work of the Corp’s Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, published its report, entitled The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went Wrong and Why, in May 2007. In January 2012 ASCE’s Board of Direction established the Task Committee on Flood Safety Policies and Practices (TCFSPP) to examine the findings put forth in the report, to determine whether progress has been made in implementing the calls for action included in this report, and to determine if the American public is now safer from the dangers of flooding. This article is a dis...