Green Infrastructure and Climate Change Adaptation

This open access book introduces the function, implementation and governance of green infrastructure in Japan and other countries where lands are geologically fragile and climatologically susceptible to climate change. It proposes green infrastructure as an adaptation strategy for climate change and biodiversity conservation. In the face of climate change, dams, levees and floodways built as disaster prevention facilities do not sufficiently function against extraordinary events such as mega-floods and tsunami disasters. To prevent those disasters and loss of biodiversity in various ecosystems, we should shift from conventional hard measures to more adaptive strategies using various functions that natural and semi-natural ecosystems provide. Green infrastructure is an interconnected network of waterways, wetlands, woodlands, wildlife habitats and other natural areas that support native species, maintain natural ecological processes, sustain air and water resources and contribute to the health and quality of life for communities and people. Green infrastructure has mainly been discussed from adaptation strategy perspectives in cities and urban areas. However, to protect cities, which are generally situated at downstream lower elevations, we explore the preservation and restoration of forests at headwater basins and wetlands along rivers from a catchment perspective. In addition, the quantitative examination of flood risk, biodiversity, and social-economic benefits described in this book brings new perspectives to the discussion. The aim of this book is to accelerate the transformative changes from gray-based adaptation strategies to green- or hybrid-based strategies to adapt to climate change. The book provides essential information on the structure, function, and maintenance of green infrastructure for scientists, university students, government officers, and practitioners

Green Infrastructure and Climate Change Adaptation

This open access book introduces the function, implementation and governance of green infrastructure in Japan and other countries where lands are geologically fragile and climatologically susceptible to climate change. It proposes green infrastructure as an adaptation strategy for climate change and biodiversity conservation. In the face of climate change, dams, levees and floodways built as disaster prevention facilities do not sufficiently function against extraordinary events such as mega-floods and tsunami disasters. To prevent those disasters and loss of biodiversity in various ecosystems, we should shift from conventional hard measures to more adaptive strategies using various functions that natural and semi-natural ecosystems provide. Green infrastructure is an interconnected network of waterways, wetlands, woodlands, wildlife habitats and other natural areas that support native species, maintain natural ecological processes, sustain air and water resources and contribute to the health and quality of life for communities and people. Green infrastructure has mainly been discussed from adaptation strategy perspectives in cities and urban areas. However, to protect cities, which are generally situated at downstream lower elevations, we explore the preservation and restoration of forests at headwater basins and wetlands along rivers from a catchment perspective. In addition, the quantitative examination of flood risk, biodiversity, and social-economic benefits described in this book brings new perspectives to the discussion. The aim of this book is to accelerate the transformative changes from gray-based adaptation strategies to green- or hybrid-based strategies to adapt to climate change. The book provides essential information on the structure, function, and maintenance of green infrastructure for scientists, university students, government officers, and practitioners

RESILIENCE OF TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS: QUANTIFICATION AND OPTIMIZATION

Transportation systems are critical lifelines for society, but are at risk from natural or human-caused hazards. To prevent significant loss from disaster events caused by such hazards, the transportation system must be resilient, and thus able to cope with disaster impact. It is impractical to reinforce or harden these systems to all types of events. However, options that support quick recovery of these systems and increase the system's resilience to such events may be helpful. To address these challenges, this dissertation provides a general mathematical framework to protect transportation infrastructure systems in the presence of uncertain events with the potential to reduce system capacity/performance. A single, general decision-support optimization model is formulated as a multi-stage stochastic program. The program seeks an optimal sequence of decisions over time based upon the realization of random events in each time stage. This dissertation addresses three problems to demonstrate the application of the proposed mathematical model in different transportation environments with emphasis on system-level resilience: Airport Resilience Problem (ARP), Building Evacuation Design Problem (BEDP), and Travel Time Resilience in Roadways (TTR). These problems aim to measure system performance given the system's topological and operational characteristics and support operational decision-making, mitigation and preparedness planning, and post-event immediate response. Mathematical optimization techniques including, bi-level programming, nonlinear programming, stochastic programming and robust optimization, are employed in the formulation of each problem. Exact (or approximate) solution methodologies based on concepts of primal and dual decomposition (integer L-shaped decomposition, Generalized Benders decomposition, and progressive hedging), disjunctive optimization, scenario simulation, and piecewise linearization methods are presented. Numerical experiments were conducted on network representations of a United States rail-based intermodal container network, the LaGuardia Airport taxiway and runway pavement network, a single-story office building, and a small roadway network

Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales

Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales provides professionals with guidance on adapting the built environment to a changing climate. This edited volume brings together practitioners and researchers to discuss climate-related resilience from the building to the city scale. This book highlights North American cases that deal with issues such as climate projections, public health, adaptive capacity of vulnerable populations, and design interventions for floodplains, making the content applicable to many locations around the world. The contributors in this book discuss topics ranging from how built environment professionals respond to a changing climate, to how the building stock may need to adapt to climate change, to how resilience is currently being addressed in the design, construction, and operations communities. The purpose of this book is to provide a better understanding of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and resilience across scales of the built environment. Architects, urban designers, planners, landscape architects, and engineers will find this a useful resource for adapting buildings and cities to a changing climate

Financial Littorals: The Architecture of Profit Margins and Ambiguous Lands

On the 4 April 2006, a municipal council was dissolved for the first time in the democratic history of Spain, making the housing crisis financially and politically apparent. In the Mediterranean town of Marbella politicians had been adapting the boundary between building land and the coastal commons to their own interests. The power to quantify and reclassify buildable space was at the core of an architectural struggle, as urban planning and the provision of housing had been designed upon the ambiguity of the highest tide in history. Since the 1988 Coastal Law, the Spanish shoreline has not been demarcated in its entirety yet: evictions and eminent domain have trapped the littoral commons in Court. Every twist of the shoreline reveals not where tides are active, but rather where landscape margins are entangled with real estate profit margins. This research investigates speculation and the housing crisis by using the materiality of the shoreline to understand dwelling struggles. The calculated construction of ambiguity in the demarcation of the littoral is analysed as a form of control and a form of resistance. Structured in three chapters, the practice-based research departs from the invention of the coastline in Spain to unpack the financialisation of space and the appropriation of the common good within the housing crisis. It investigates how the provision of ‘affordable’ homes as financial instruments relies on the global circulation of natural capital, coastal wetlands and offsetting operations. Through case studies in Europe and the US, it investigates the engineering of the shoreline by insurance companies after ‘natural disasters’ and the circumvention of mortgage debt offshore. Embedded in an analysis of housing from a critical finance perspective, this thesis demonstrates how rather than territorial boundaries being a circulation of capital, it is capital what needs to be read as a constant circulation of zoning laws and ambiguous borderlines, in order to anticipate alternative futures to housing inequality

Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales

Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales provides professionals with guidance on adapting the built environment to a changing climate. This edited volume brings together practitioners and researchers to discuss climate-related resilience from the building to the city scale. This book highlights North American cases that deal with issues such as climate projections, public health, adaptive capacity of vulnerable populations, and design interventions for floodplains, making the content applicable to many locations around the world. The contributors in this book discuss topics ranging from how built environment professionals respond to a changing climate, to how the building stock may need to adapt to climate change, to how resilience is currently being addressed in the design, construction, and operations communities. The purpose of this book is to provide a better understanding of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and resilience across scales of the built environment. Architects, urban designers, planners, landscape architects, and engineers will find this a useful resource for adapting buildings and cities to a changing climate

Moving Towards Sustainable Coastal Development in South Asia By Linking Coastal Climate Change Adaptation With Integrated Coastal Zone Management Through the Instrumentality of Law

For long, coastal management focused on the sustainable utilization of coastal resources and avoidance and management of conflict, as well as the promotion of complementarities between users. However, with rising sea levels and other climate change impacts, coastal management has become increasingly complex. This thesis investigates the legal instruments underpinning the management of coastal zones, exploring the concept of sustainable coastal development (SCD) and the relevance of the integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) process. Specifically, the discourse analyzes how law and legal regimes play a backbone role in strengthening and supporting ICZM implementation by facilitating the linkage between ICZM and coastal climate change adaptation (CCCA) to contribute to SCD. Countless reports and studies testify that several of the world’s coastal regions have already and will continue to be detrimentally impacted by sea level rise (SLR) and climate change. One of the major theaters where these impacts will be most acute is South Asia, where vast populations are crowded into low-lying coastal areas. Most of the residents in these zones are economically constrained and have poor adaptive capacities, leaving them particularly vulnerable to climate change and SLR. Accordingly, operationalizing ICZM and linking it with CCCA is vital to these coastal communities, as is enacting and reengineering their coastal laws to affect the linkage. However, given the magnitude of the problem and the inability of most of the South Asian coastal countries to be able to respond singularly to the challenges there is an urgent need for greater regional co-operation. Drawing on the experiences of other coastal countries and regions, certain core principles that can inform coastal law-making for South Asia are identified. The idea is that these principles when set in a regional level instrument (in the instant case, the South Asian Seas Action Plan), will not only go a long way to strengthen regional cooperation, but also, and more importantly, will help coastal countries develop their respective coastal laws by effectuating the linkage between ICZM and CCCA implementation. This reform agenda has significant potential to facilitate the move towards SCD