Southeast Texas Hurricane Evacuation Study

Project Front Page | Last updated: Tue Mar 10, 2026

This page provides a central hub for project updates, events, and links to the Planning Atlas and related resources. It supports the hurricane evacuation study by keeping participants and stakeholders informed about meetings, draft reports, and key materials. The site is a working resource and will evolve throughout the project. For questions or requests, contact Alexander Abuabara at abuabara@tamu.edu.

Reports

Updated hazard analysis for coastal counties including Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Hardin, Harris, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Newton, and Orange

·         Southeast Texas Hurricane Evacuation Study Final Report

·         Southeast Texas Hurricane Evacuation Study Hazard Analysis

Southeast Texas Hurricane Evacuation Scenarios

·        Scenario Matrix by County

·        Scenario Matrix by Region

Mapping Applications

Interactive geospatial data resources for evacuation and vulnerability analysis

 

County Evacuation Zones Mapbook
(Printable PDF by Page Size)

County Level Evacuation Clearance

·         12-hr Scenario Clearance Curves (Jan 2026)
Using a custom-developed script, we processed the evacuation results from RtePM for multiple runs, reading a GIS shapefile of block-level results, aggregating vehicle counts by zone and time interval, and transforming those counts into a "cumulative evacuated proportion" time series per zone and scenario. The script parses zone labels into county and planning-zone categories, standardizes the planning-zone names and ordering, and for each county generates a graph consisting of (1) line curves of evacuated proportion over time for all planning zones in that county and (2) a small summary table reporting the estimated time (via linear interpolation) when each curve reaches 50% and 90% evacuation. The table layout below shows which graphs are available for each county under each scenario.


scenarios table

Presentations, Meetings, Workshops

Final Presentations

Date: March 16, 2026

Location: Virtual

Behavioral and Transportation Workshops

Date: December 8, 2025
Location: Virtual

Evacuation Zones Workshops

Packet for All the Counties in the Upper Planning Zone
Hardin County Surge and Potential Zones

Date: April 1, 2024
Location: Orange County Convention and Expo Center
11475 FM 1442, Orange, TX 77630

Packet for Chambers County
Packet for Galveston County
Packet for Harris County
Packet for Liberty County

Date: March 18, 2024
Location: Walter Hall Park
807 State Hwy 3 N., League City TX 77573

Packet for Brazoria County
Packet for Jackson County
Packet for Matagorda County

Date: April 15, 2024
Location: Lake Jackson Civic Center
333 TX-332, Lake Jackson TX 77566

Vulnerability Analysis Kick Off Meeting

Planning Zones

In previous Hurricane Evacuation Studies undertaken by the National Hurricane Program, the Texas coast was divided into four evacuation study areas: the Rio Grande Valley (Hidalgo, Cameron, & Willacy), Coastal Bend (Kenedy, Kleberg, Nueces, San Patricio, Aransas, Refugio, Calhoun, & Victoria), Houston/Galveston (Jackson, Matagorda, Brazoria, Harris, & Galveston) and Sabine Lake (Chambers, Liberty, Jefferson, Hardin, Orange, Jasper, & Newton).

This time, the 12 counties comprising the Houston/Galveston and Sabine Lake study areas have been combined into one single study area, the Southeast Texas Hurricane Study Area. To facilitate the Hurricane Evacuation Study process, particularly when holding workshops to work more closely with county/municipality and other stakeholders, the 12 counties have been divided into three planning zones: Upper, Middle, and Lower. The counties in each planning zone are as follows:

Planning Zones

Previous Studies and Other Presentations

Coastal Bend Hurricane Evacuation Study

Rio Grande Valley Study Area Hurricane Evacuation Study

Team Members

Sponsors