Disaster planning, disaster recovery

URI Brings Science to Disaster Planning

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff  http://www.ecori.org/

.KINGSTON — With the all science and engineering research done to adapt to the the worst Mother Nature can dish out, you would think it would be easy to prepare for floods, earthquakes and even climate change. 

But then there's reality and, of course, politics. 

Just look at New Orleans and Christchurch, New Zealand. Both endured major natural disasters that destroyed whole portions of each city. Yet planners in both metropolitan areas have taken different paths to rebuilding.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch abandoned whole neighborhoods, including most of its financial district, to avoid the cost and headaches of inhabiting high-risk areas. Other neighborhoods adopted rigid design standards to withstand future quakes.

New Orleans, however, has enacted mostly smaller fixes. Seemingly common-sense changes such as matching the height requirement of new buildings  to the depth of the flood created by Hurricane Katrina were prevented by infighting, according to at least one planning expert.

Ninth Ward in New Orleans

"Politics trumps safety, security and science," said Doug Alhers, an authority on disaster planning who spoke at the University of Rhode Island on Dec. 1.

Ahlers, a URI graduate and faculty member at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, helps at-risk and already-devastated communities around the world adapt to manmade and natural catastrophes.

The buzzword for this work is "resilience," or how to lessen disaster damage. New zoning rules are of course important. But so are the development of natural and manmade projects, such as waterfront barrier parks and levees in areas prone to tsunamis, or even floating homes in flood-prone places like the Netherlands.

Since 2000, URI's Coastal Institute has been been working with the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) and the state Emergency Management Agency to develop disaster response programs. Lessons from the 1996 North Cape oil spill in particular helped to create the "marriage between science and emergency response," said Judith Swift, director of the response program at the Coastal Institute.

URI offers the brains and expertise from organic chemists and biologists to determine hazards and offer the best and fastest cleanup for say an oil spill. URI economists analyze economic impacts and how much and what to buy for the cleanup.

"It's very proactive," said Peter August, a professor in URI's Department of Natural Resources Science.

Swift and August helped develop the Scientific Support for Environmental Emergency Response.

Climate change adaptation in Rhode Island and around the world also relies on resilience practices. Alhers predicted that the insurance industry also will likely play a big role in determining where and what gets built in threatened areas. 

But most of all, he said, "It takes a political will that certainly didn't exist in Louisiana."