The City of Galveston, Texas, has faced repeated hurricane damage, notably from the 1900 Great Galveston Hurricane and Hurricane Ike in 2008. Existing protection, mainly the Galveston Seawall, is insufficient to prevent flooding from storm surge, especially under sea level rise. Along with their plan to raise barrier islands and close off inlets to prevent water coming into the Bay, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) proposed a Ring Barrier consisting of floodwalls and levees to protect Galveston specifically. However, its alignment through developed areas raises concerns over port access, required pump capacity, operational reliability of traffic gates, and future city expansion.
This design study develops three alternative surge protection strategies that seek alleviate the concerns raised for the USACE Ring Barrier, along with protecting the port of Galveston, which is located between Galveston Island and Pelican Island, from storm surge.

Strategy 1 keeps to Galveston Island, placing the road that roughly separates the port terminals from the commercial/residential areas, Harborside Drive, on a levee to avoid the need for traffic gates. Local resilience measures for port terminals, particularly cruise facilities, are proposed to minimize damage and recovery time.
Strategy 2 avoids the developed area on Galveston Island by including the port area inside the protection, reducing required pumping capacity. This would entail two large-scale storm surge barriers at both entrances to the port basin to ensure port accessibility, and a levee around the current development on Pelican Island.
Strategy 3 expands on strategy 2 by including a larger part of Pelican Island, undeveloped as of yet, in preparation for future developments.
The expected reduction in flood risk over structure lifetime and performance on criteria other than cost for strategies 2 and 3 is deemed insufficient when compared to strategy 1. The preferred strategy of the 3 developed is therefore strategy 1, keeping the main protection to Galveston Island, and protecting the port with local measures.