Climate Adaptation Engineering and Risk-based Design and Management of Infrastructure

International audienceA changing climate may also result in more intense tropical cyclones and storms, more intense rain events and flooding, and other natural hazards. Moreover, increases in CO2 atmospheric concentrations, temperature and humidity will increase corrosion of concrete and steel structures. The chapter will describe how risk-based approaches are well suited to optimising climate adaptation strategies related to the design and maintenance of existing infrastructure. Climate adaptation strategies may include retrofitting or strengthening of existing structures, more frequent inspections, or enhanced designs. An important aspect is assessing at what point in time climate adaptation becomes economically viable. Stochastic methods are used to model infrastructure performance, effectiveness of adaptation strategies, exposure, and costs. These concepts will be illustrated with state-of-the-art research of risk-based assessment of climate adaptation strategies

Global Risks 2014, Ninth Edition.

The Global Risks 2014 report highlights how global risks are not only interconnected but also have systemic impacts. To manage global risks effectively and build resilience to their impacts, better efforts are needed to understand, measure and foresee the evolution of interdependencies between risks, supplementing traditional risk-management tools with new concepts designed for uncertain environments. If global risks are not effectively addressed, their social, economic and political fallouts could be far-reaching, as exemplified by the continuing impacts of the financial crisis of 2007-2008

Building Disaster Resilience: Steps toward Sustainability

Disaster losses continue to escalate globally and in many regions human losses (death, injury, permanent displacement) often exceed the economic toll. Current disaster policies are reactive with a short-term focus―respond and rebuild as quickly as possible and in the same way after the event. Such policies ignore the longer-term approach of building disaster-resilient communities, in which investments made now show financial and social returns later by reducing the impact of disasters. This article provides a vision for resilient nations in 2030 based on three recent policy reports. It highlights the necessary steps to wards achieving sustainability using the lens of disaster resilience as the pathway towards strengthening communities' ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, respond to, and recover from present and future disasters

Emerging investigator series: moving beyond resilience by considering antifragility in potable water systems

It is inherently difficult to plan water systems for a future that is non-predictive. This paper introduces a novel perspective for the design and operation of potable water systems under increasing water quality volatility (e.g., a relatively rapid and unpredicted deviation from baseline water quality). Increased water quality volatility and deep uncertainty stress water systems, confound design decisions, and increase the risk of decreased water system performance. Recent emphasis on resilience in drinking water treatment has partly addressed this issue, but still establishes an adversarial relationship with change. An antifragile system benefits from volatile change. By incorporating antifragility, water systems may move beyond resilience and improve performance with extreme events and other changes, rather than survive, or fail and quickly recover. Using examples of algal blooms, wildfires, and the COVID-19 pandemic, this work illustrates fragility, resilience, and antifragility within physicochemical process design including clarification, adsorption and disinfection. Methods for increasing antifragility, both individual process options and new system design tools, are discussed. Novel physicochemical processes with antifragile characteristics include ferrate preoxidation and magnetic iron (nano)particles. New design tools that allow for systematic evaluation of antifragile opportunities include artificial neural networks and virtual jar or pilot “stress testing”. Incorporating antifragile characteristics represents a trade-off with capital and/or operating cost. We present a real options analysis approach to considering costs in the context of antifragile design decisions. Adopting this antifragile perspective will help ensure water system improved performance during extreme events and a general increase in volatility

Arising: Hurricane (Superstorm) Sandy’s Impact on Design/Planning Professionals

Standing by my bedroom window, looking out at the ocean, a huge wave comes and swallows up my building. Everything around me is gone, including me. I wake up. I am 13 years old and living in the Coney Island Houses on Surf Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. With ongoing anthropogenic changes to the natural environment such as sea level rise and intensifying storms, coastal communities, especially ones segregated by class and culture, are particularly vulnerable in this context that challenges a way of life, and in some instances, threatens that life\u27s survival. This dissertation focuses specifically on what one massive storm - Hurricane Sandy (Superstorm Sandy) - left behind. This research explored how these experiences impacted the design/ planning professionals (architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers) approaches to future climate-related events, as well as the impacts upon them personally, professionally, and societally. A single, embedded case study with narrative inquiry was used to gather first-person accounts and insights into the work, thoughts, and feelings of professionals whom society relies on increasingly as climate-induced crises proliferate. Data were classified into three pillars: Personal (impacts on the self/individual, psycho-social challenges, empathy/stress), Professional (impact to professional practice, reflection on strategies post-Sandy, impact on future events), and Societal (local and global impacts, leadership). Prominent themes under the personal pillar were impermanence, emotional resilience, and dignity. Professionally, Sandy left the study participants looking toward a more reflective design practice. The societal pillar described the broader social issues that emerged from the interviews. Two significant findings were lack of equal attention to marginalized communities and lack of diversity and inclusion within the design/planning profession. As more populations are being impacted by Hurricane Sandy-like events, designers/planners will need to become leaders in changing to both a reflective and proactive stance to professional practice in the context of climate, economic and social justice. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/, and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu