Hurricane season brings an annual flurry of disaster mangement forums focused on being prepared to respond when a disaster overwhelms a community. In contrast, disaster resiliency emphasizes a proactive rather than a reactive approach to a weather-related calamity by trying to avoid or lessen the impact on humans and the built landscape.
The Disaster Resiliency Symposium, organized by the FIRE (fire, insurance and real estate) students of UTPA’s College of Business Administration, addressed topics such as hazard mitigation planning, cross-border resilience, and examples of successful resilience strategies and policies. “We flood here,” said Robert Nelsen, UTPA president. “Every decision can make us more vulnerable or more resilient. It’s our choice.” He said the new UT-RGV will have a first-rate global disaster program with experienced faculty and a center committed to solving problems and making communities resilient, to save lives and money.
In a disaster, businesses risk losing their productive assets, the links in their supply chain and the availability of their workforce. In the Valley, a storm surge up the Rio Grande, hurricane force winds or coastal and inland flooding could cripple the economy. Globally, the economic loss risk from floods has been increasing steadily, although flood mortality is declining. Locally, the concentration of more population and high value assets in coastal and riverside counties ups the ante.
Risk can be mitigated by updated data on hazards, by revised building codes, by retrofitting buildings to those codes, by use of permeable pavement, storm drainage and other infrastructure that absorbs peak water flows, and by wise land use planning and development. The cost benefit for doing risk reduction in the planning and design stage is four times cheaper than the cost of having to retrofit or relocate.
“We continue to develop and expand into high hazard areas,” said Walter Peacock, landscape architecture and urban planning professor at TAMU and director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. “We often destroy natural ecosystems that can mitigate against disaster losses, like the wetlands that are natural buffers.” Natural disasters are an outcome of interaction between biophysical system, human system and built environments. Peacock’s focus on disaster mitigation and specific ways to prevent damage has the goal of moving Texas toward a more resilient future and a different view of long-term recovery.
Hazard mitigation can be structural, such as dams and levees, although those promote development in hazardous areas. Storm water retention ponds and roofs and windows that meet wind and hail standards are examples of newer methods of mitigating risk. Nonstructural mitigation, which needs to be part of transportation, zoning and water departments, and economic development plans, encompasses informed land use planning with accurate flood maps. “Building construction practices are extraordinarily important,” said Peacock, amazed by the perception that Texas has a uniform building code. “We don’t.”
To read more of this story by Eileen Mattei, visit the “Current & Past Issues” tab on this website or pick up a copy of the June 2014 print edition of Valley Business Report.