Much of today’s infrastructure needs rebuilding. What needs to be done before catastrophe strikes?
America’s GPA with regard to the state of critical infrastructure — roads, bridges, dams, drinking water, hazardous waste — is about a 1.3, equivalent to a grade of D+, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). It will take trillions of investment dollars to rebuild. Those costs are magnified if you acknowledge the trend of more intense natural disasters and the promise of more damage, largely from wind and water.
The solution isn’t neat and tidy or easy, but with forward thinking, it presents opportunity. The Smarter- Safer coalition, composed of more than 30 groups, including major insurance companies, addressed the problem in an April 2015 report that says the U.S. must spend more money on infrastructure protection pre-disaster instead of wasting so much money rebuilding after an emergency happens.
It’s a concept that’s beginning to resonate, especially after events like Hurricane Sandy. Many experts agree that investments in more resilient infrastructure and an acknowledgment of infrastructure as a system are critical to viable long-term recovery.
‘Tactical, Political Compromise’
The ASCE says it would take more than $3.5 trillion to upgrade all U.S. infrastructure to decent working order by 2020. That figure grows when you add disasters, waste, fraud and inflation. And it seems most policymakers take a stand on the issue only after being hit hard by an emergency like a hurricane.
“The majority of policymakers are not leaders; they will follow the direction of the prevailing wind,” said Aris Papadopoulos, the former CEO of Titan America. Papadopoulos was at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and after retiring from the construction business, he made resiliency a personal mission. “The private sector will have to lead in collaboration with a few policymakers who make it their agenda and bring the spotlight over on this problem.”
The critical infrastructure — transportation, water supply and the like — need attention, but housing and light commercial buildings are another major area of need, and one that has been neglected to the detriment of the country, Papadopoulos said.
Building codes were developed as a sort of minimum requirement and are not at all adequate to protect residents or people in light commercial buildings.
“Building codes are a product of tactical, economic and political compromise and the lowest denominator of protection,” Papadopoulos said. “In the U.S. we practice a fragmented, inconsistent and often outdated system of building codes, which unfortunately allows special interests to keep the bar as low as possible.”
The bar is far higher for large commercial buildings, but those only account for around 20 percent of the nation’s built environment, with homes and light commercial making up the rest. “We’re saving lives but losing livelihoods, particularly homes, the nest eggs for most people’s wealth,” he said. “We’re designing and building below the hazard levels and hoping the hazard doesn’t hit.”
The rate of losses resulting from disasters is escalating at an alarming pace. Globally the figure averages about $300 billion a year, which is more than the gross domestic product of 80 percent of the world’s nations, according to Papadopoulos. The U.S. leads with the worst losses in the decade between 2000 and 2009, with an average of $35 billion a year, a figure greater than the total losses of the next nine countries combined. Things have gotten worse since 2009, and the trend is projected to continue.
Papadopoulos called climate change a “convenient alibi to explain away what we wish to avoid exploring in more depth. In reality, the predicted impacts of climate change still lie ahead of us,” he said. “Just imagine how much worse things could get several decades from now once climate change really kicks in.”
Builders must embrace safety, much like carmakers embraced vehicle safety features decades ago after initially fighting them. They could build “fortified” or “code plus” homes. The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety came up with the fortified rating and has a state-of-the-art facility for testing homes. “Why shouldn’t Zillow include that kind of information in their database?” Papadopoulos asked.
He said the government should admit that building codes, especially in residential and small commercial structures, don’t protect property and owners should upgrade to code plus.
The government is incentivizing green construction, but that doesn’t protect property from a disaster. The two should go hand in hand, said Cathleen Kelly, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “More permeable roads, more green infrastructure to absorb heavy rainfall and restoring coastal areas are all hugely beneficial,” she said.
System of Systems
And then there are the interdependencies that connect certain infrastructures and complicate things when disasters strike. For example, infrastructure that pumps water may be dependent on the electrical grid, but when the power goes out during a disaster, other infrastructure, including the water pumping system, may be affected.
Thus various infrastructures need to be thought of more holistically. “If you’re doing post-disaster planning, you really have to think from a context of multisystem engagement and multisystem prioritization,” said Bob Prieto, senior vice president of Fluor, a global engineering construction company. That means those running the power system need to be cognizant of the priorities of restoring power to certain facilities.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has ranked the state of the country’s critical infrastructure a D+ and estimates it would cost more than $3.5 trillion to upgrade all infrastructure to decent working order by 2020.
It also means building infrastructure with a larger system in mind, not just buildings, and thinking of infrastructure more holistically. This is especially true in transportation, and there are committees beginning to work on the tools necessary for that to happen, Prieto said. “I would suggest that we really need to think about infrastructure in the post-disaster context as a system of systems.”
As a first step, Prieto said it’s important to understand the core competencies and capabilities of each infrastructure system and then take that thinking to the next level by recognizing their interdependencies.
Fred Krimgold, director of the Disaster Risk Reduction Program and a faculty member of the Advanced Research Institute at Virginia Tech, said sectors like transportation, energy, water and communications are aware of the consequences of failure of their own systems but not what happens “downstream.” “Up in New Jersey and New York after Sandy, a big problem was fuel shortage, not because they didn’t have fuel but because they didn’t have electric power.” All the fuel was in tanks in the ground and had to be pumped electrically.
Krimgold worked with a small Virginia city of around 50,000 to demonstrate the cascading failures that can happen when one infrastructure system shuts down. GIS capability showed the connectedness of the electric power system and the water system via overlays of system maps. “The guys from the water department and the guys from the power utility were able to identify points of dependency.”
The two entities were then able to sit down and negotiate potential solutions, Krimgold said. “For example, do you need to upgrade if this is a single feed and a very high-priority pump in the water system? Should you do a double feed that is fed from another substation?”
The understanding of infrastructure as a system of systems, Prieto said, is beginning to resonate, along with the idea that rebuilding the same structures after a disaster is unacceptable. “We’re past the denial stage. We’re at the recognition stage, and I would call it a growing articulation of things that need to be done.”
The ASCE recently moved to establish a goal that would cut the life cycle costs of new infrastructure to half of today’s prices. There are a lot of reasons for that, Prieto said, including the fact that we can’t afford all the infrastructure we need or the repairs that will eventually be required. “It’s not just about building it cheaper in the first instance. It’s about adopting a life cycle view of building something that when all costs are considered is more capital efficient.”
There’s a recognition that infrastructure standards were written for individual buildings, not with infrastructure systems in mind, especially where transportation is concerned. Prieto said there’s beginning to be some work done to develop tools that address the need for a new approach.
Kelly also sees the acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of infrastructure as critical to developing resilience, as is the understanding that more destructive natural disasters are expected in the future. “There are so many interconnections between the different sectors when it comes to resilience and the snowball effect that can occur when one system goes out,” she said. When the cell towers were down during Hurricane Sandy, for example, residents didn’t know where emergency facilities were and how to get from point A to point B.
Flooding and wind are the main threats to infrastructure systems, according to Papadopoulos. “When you look at the history of insurance losses, wind and water [cause] probably close to 75 to 80 percent of losses,” he said. “Unfortunately the U.S. spent considerable resources on earthquake hazards.” And although earthquakes happen, he explained, they are much less frequent, and the cumulative effect is a small fraction of what is lost to water and wind.
Building Sustainably
There are signs of progress. Unfortunately it usually happens after a major incident. Following Sandy, the federal government set up a rebuilding task force led by former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. That led to a process throughout the region of thinking about rebuilding in a more integrated, strategic way.
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