Infrastructure – exposure from natural disasters
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Category Archives: Infrastructure
Resources from the ASCE
ASCE is the American Society of Civil Engineers, and an old friend, Richard Wright, is an active volunteer at the association. Recently, mentioned some of the work ASCE has been doing, and I thought I would share it with readers.
ASCE work on Adapting Infrastructure and Civil Engineering Practice to a Changing Climate is described in a freely available webinar: The webinar is available at http://www.asce.org/continuing-education/past-elearning-webinars/
Another product is Adapting Infrastructure and Civil Engineering Practice to a Changing Climate on September 1, 2015.
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If you would like more information, contact the Diva and she will put you in touch directly with Dick Wright.
The Neglect of Infrastructure
See this article from the Wash Post on Subway and Other Decaying Infrastructure.
Very sad commentary about vulnerabilities on a good day. No wonder disasters are so extensive and expensive.
Journal Article
New Open Access Journal Article. Do not be put off by the title; the article is interesting and original. See: Critical infrastructure, panarchies and the vulnerability paths of cascading disasters.
If you do not know what panarchy means, and I did not, see this explanation from the Resilience Alliance.
Bolstering Critical Infrastructure Resilience After H. Sandy
See this blog posting, by my friend Eric Holdeman, on the new report: Bolstering Critical Infrastructure Resilience.
Another Resilience Source
From Fellow Blogger, Eric Holdeman, this posting about trying to keep up with the literature about resilience:
Specially he cites an organization called the National Infrastructure Advisory Council and their report titled: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience National Research and Development Plan; Final Report and Recommendations
Another Report on H. Sandy Rebuilding – from RAND
From RAND: The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force’s Infrastructure Resilience Guidelines; An Initial Assessment of Implementation by Federal Agencies. 2014; 74 pages.
This report is very different from the one done by CRS, as noted in the previous posting. It focuses on Infrastructure Resilience Guidelines. And the Diva has to admit she does not know much about this topic. She welcomes comments about the report from readers.
Protecting Urban Water Supplies in Big Disasters
Another article about infrastructure: Are our buildings prepared for natural disasters bigger than hurricane Sandy?
Russell Unger, chairman of the task force that proposed building code upgrades after Sandy, explains why city residents should never lose access to running water – and how he helped solve that problem in NYC
Insfrastructure in NYC After H. Sandy
By way of the U.K, here is an interesting case study of Availability of Infrastructure: New York after H. Sandy.
Thanks to Donovan Finn for the citation.
“Our Failing Weather Infrastructure”
From the NY Times, an article about another potentially disastrous deficiency: Our Failing Weather Infrastructure. Clearly federal budget cuts in recent times have done a lot of damage. An excerpt:
Each of these instances revealed just how fragile our national weather program really is, and how desperately we need to invest significantly more in the weather infrastructure, technology and the kind of communication redundancies that will keep all of us safe.
This is not a new problem. For years, congressional allocations to the National Weather Service have all but flatlined. Meanwhile, the cost of storm recovery has skyrocketed. In the 20 years leading up to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the United States suffered 133 weather disasters that exceeded $1 billion in damages, for a total of over $875 billion. Sandy, the second-costliest hurricane in the nation’s history, came with a price tag of an estimated $65 billion.
Recovery Diva 