In the summer of 1993, many of the Midwest’s rivers flooded, including the Iowa River in Iowa City—a 100-year event. Fifteen years later, it happened again. If resiliency practices were incorporated, however, might such disasters be mitigated?
Will larger coastal cities like Miami need to move or their populations flee at some point? Or undertake engineering on a massive scale to safely stay put? After all, consider the devastation that Super Storm Sandy brought on Lower Manhattan. What if, like Iowa City, the next 100-year flood happens fifteen years later, and the center of the financial universe is submerged again? It all comes back to mindfulness and planning ahead.
“We know that it is less expensive to design resilient buildings and communities in advance of a natural or man-made event, than it is to rebuild after the fact,” says Nadja Turek, who serves as Woolpert’s research and development facilitator. “So we have to help clients make informed design choices with resiliency in mind as early in the planning and design process as possible.”
The key to developing a resilience plan is understanding and addressing the specific issues for the project based upon site geographic location, climate zone, function served, demographics of the users, economic parameters and context within the surrounding community. Depending on your specific criteria, we've highlighted four case studies below that may provide insight on you next project.
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