Countless communities ask this question: After dealing with devastating floods, fires and wind, should they be rebuilt?
If they do, can a future natural disaster withdraw? Engineers, designers, policymakers and citizens ask themselves with the question individually. However, the future security of these communities depends on all these groups that work together, adopting a system -based approach to create a more resistant future.
Jeff Albee, vice president, stantec
The question of this time is how the future proof infrastructure is, as communities throughout the country are being decimated by natural disasters. Fires in California earlier this year wiped the entire neighborhoods, while storms throughout the south and in the middle west have been uprooted in recent months. Each year, Florida and the Gulf coast for increasingly volatile storms that beat the coast and cost millions of states. More than 5,800 homes were fully displaced to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
We have seen that these communities are continuously rebuilt simply through stronger building materials. Hurricanes who are abused two or three times in a year continue to become the same “storm resistant” options, as a scarcity of homes nationwide causes the possibility of moving inappropriate and, in some cases, impossible.
While hurricane -proof windows and fire -resistant coating can help mitigate some of the impacts of these disasters, these solutions are as strong as the last storm and only target part of the reconstruction equation. The requirements for materials such as Stucco and Masonry also consider the standards of sustainability that promote the use of natural materials such as wood.
Risky business
The level of risk facing these communities is just too high for not using all the tools of the modern building, whether data, technology or politics, to build more resistant infrastructure. And, most likely, an effective multidisciplinary approach will require all three.
But this is not how communities approach their reconstructions right now. Today, decisions on how communities reconstruct in isolation; Reconstruction is a separate conversation from emergency response and soil use. Flooding sensors can be involved, another may involve computer modeling and another may involve GIS map systems, all powerful tools, but limited when applied individually.
In isolation, these tools only react and respond to storms as they existed in the past; A city puts flood sensors where the riverbank has been flooded earlier or a mapping software is used to limit constructions in historical danger areas. But as these disasters become more unpredictable, a system -based approach can help communities see the future, beyond what is likely to happen towards what could happen, and through the use of automatic learning and artificial intelligence, see all the fall effects of these scenarios.
A community can use high -tech sensors to detect when its roads flood. However, unless these sensors are associated with the advanced data modeling, policymakers and those who respond to the emergency will not understand the implications when these sensors go out. The sensor may indicate that it is time to evacuate, but a computer model would warn that the evacuation route is at risk of being washed.
Only these tools respond to what happened. Together they respond to what could happen.
No silver bullet
No matter how much we are working on disaster proof infrastructure, there is no solution that can solve everything. However, the use of various tools in various disciplines can report planning while mitigating the worst of a disaster’s impacts.
Just look at the regions prone to the earthquake manage the risk. A country like Japan, for example, is in hundreds of fault lines, but has been able to rebuild through a way of thinking of systems. The buildings are smarter designed, yes, but they are also intended to reflect models of these lines of faults. The sensors provide early warning signals that give schools and communities time to evacuate, while policymakers create standards and zoning practices that guarantee a safer and more resistant community. It is a national effort, not isolated in coastal cities or in large cities; These systems create a more secure nation together.
The beauty of a system’s approach is that it does not mean that existing programs are obsolete; In contrast, modern technology and engineering systems can be pointed out above the existing answers. Look at New Orleans, which made integrated planning after Katrina hurricane. Before the storm, the city had installed bombs to help control the flow of the Mississippi river in the event of a major storm, which helped, but only to one point. When the city examined its response to the storm after the fact, it was realized that it had to adjust its use of the pump, changing the rate of the pump in front of a storm depending on the current models.
It is the key to the design of the future test: designing systems that can be adapted to new scenarios and can help to predict how these scenarios are reproduced. The great differentiating of the next 50 years will be among the communities that leaders are willing to adopt a focus of systems for emergency response and those who are not.
Everyone has the keys to a safer and more resistant future, not only are technologists, policymakers or engineers who will be able to solve this problem, but also all these groups together. Only this collaborative effort will be able to redefine what it means to have prepared infrastructure and to ensure that these communities have what is needed to overcome these next storms.
Jeff Albee is the Vice President and Director of Digital Solutions at Stantec.
