2012 CERES Insurance Industry Study: Progress Slow, Urgently Needed
Climate-change-related disasters threaten industry profitability, and may drive less-prepared companies from a variety of asset and risk classes. A reduction in the availability and affordability of insurance and risk management services can threaten the economy…
Read MoreThe New Orleans Principles
My interest in resilience was first kindled by work I did with many others in 2005, following Hurricane Katrina. Seeing the devastation wrought on the Gulf Coast by this storm, several chapters of the U.S. Green Building Council, particularly St. Louis and Little Rock, wanted to do what they could to help out. I was invited into the process, and we organized a series of charrettes at the 2005 Greenbuild conference in Altlanta. Some 160 people participated in those charrettes, one-fifth of them from New Orleans and the greater Gulf Coast region. Out of those charrettes emerged several...
Read MoreMaking Los Angeles Resilient
Lisa Novick has a very good blog on what Los Angeles should do to boost it’s resilience on the Huff Post Los Angeles. The blog includes a nice definition of resilience: “Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb shock and still maintain its identity and function. Resilient systems — business, social, ecological, you name it — all have redundancy so that, when a shock or increased stress occurs, there will be back up. There will be some elasticity: someone or something will be able to step in and perform when the usual relationships fail.” Novick also...
Read MoreRe-imagining Manhattan
You might have missed this in your holiday busy-ness, as we did: In December, Atlantic Cities reported on a project by a team of architect and planners from the University of Michigan to rethink Manhattan in the light of the clear danger of damage from future versions of Hurricane Sandy: From the edges to the center of the island, the Michigan team’s concept plan alternates marshes, tidal defense berms, floating neighborhoods, hydroponic farms and new parks to protect against flooding. It also retrofits flood plains with a new datum above the water line for service, emergency and power...
Read MoreArtificial reefs for tsunami protection
In Sumatra, new methods are under development to protect cities from tsunamis: “It uses the concept of cathode accretion–putting a small electrical charge in the water that draws calcium carbonate (the stuff reefs are made of) out of solution and onto an iron-based skeleton. The calcium slowly accumulates, creating an artificial reef and wave barrier.” And down the road, the same method may be used to create community hubs as places of refuge from tsunami waters....
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