Urban resilienceBuilding resilient urban infrastructure to cope with climate challenges
In addition to urban flooding, global climate change is predicted to bring increased coastal flooding, like that associated with Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, as well as extreme heat. As extreme weather events like these occur more frequently, global climate change may demand that we recalibrate our definition of “rare.” Historically, infrastructure to mitigate flooding and extreme heat has been designed to be fail-safe, meaning that it is designed to be fail-proof. But recently we have seen that fail-safe can be a dangerous illusion. Fifty researchers from different disciplines from fifteen institutions have teamed up to explore these challenges and to change the way we think about urban infrastructure.
In the early morning of 8 September 2014, rain began to fall across the Phoenix metro area. It showed no signs of stopping during the morning commute, and soon lakes were forming on streets and freeways. Drivers scrambled from their cars as floodwaters overtook their vehicles.
When the skies cleared that afternoon, nearly half of Phoenix’s annual rainfall had been dumped on the city in a matter of hours. Infrastructure built to handle rainwater and runoff — such as retention basins, storm sewers and washes — was overwhelmed. As a result, cars and homes were flooded and two people lost their lives.
The chances of such a rain event occurring in Phoenix during a given year are only 0.2 percent. This is also known as a 500-year flood event because it is expected to be so rare as to occur only once during that period. Just a few weeks after the 8 September rain, another storm soaked the city, a storm that only had a 1 percent chance of occurring (also known as a 100-year flood event).
As extreme weather events like these occur more frequently, global climate change may demand that we recalibrate our definition of “rare.”
In addition to urban flooding, global climate change is predicted to bring increased coastal flooding, like that associated with Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, as well as extreme heat.
Historically, infrastructure to mitigate flooding and extreme heat has been designed to be fail-safe, meaning that it is designed to be fail-proof. But recently we have seen that fail-safe can be a dangerous illusion.
“The failing in these extreme weather events was that people built and trained themselves to think that events of this magnitude will never happen,” said Charles Redman, founding director and professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. “It happens now, and we can expect them to happen more frequently in the future!”
Reimagining infrastructure
An ASU release reports that three ASU researchers from different disciplines have joined together to lead a team of fifty researchers from fifteen institutions to face these challenges and to change the way we think about urban infrastructure.
