
Floodwaters surged into the Manhattan entrance to the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel during Hurricane Sandy. Photo: Jay Fine/Flickr
By Eric Jaffe, Atlantic Cities | January 14, 2013
From a behavioral perspective, the hardest thing about adapting to the slow process of climate change is creating a sense of urgency. After a close call with Hurricane Irene a couple years back, and a horrible clash with Hurricane Sandy this past fall, New York is beginning to accept the fact that when it comes to weather patterns along its coasts, there’s a terrifying new normal.
Late last week, just two months after Sandy, a state commission released a massive, 200-plus page blueprint on ways to develop resilience in the face of tomorrow’s environment [PDF]. The NYS 2100 Commission — one of several formed by Governor Andrew Cuomo following Sandy — evaluated the state’s critical infrastructure systems and recommended a gradient of goals, from broad to specific, to reduce their vulnerability.
“There is no doubt that building resilience will require investment, but it will also reduce the economic damage and costs of responding to future storms and events, while improving the everyday operations of our critical systems,” write commission co-chairs Judith Rodin of the Rockefeller Foundation and Felix Rohatyn of Lazard in a foreword.
While the commission offered statewide suggestions, its emphasis fell naturally on the New York City metro area — especially coastal parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island — where Sandy hit hardest.
The report’s recommendations were based on five characteristics of resiliency: spare capacity (e.g. establishing backup systems, such as alternative transportation routes), flexibility (favoring “soft” solutions that can be modified over time, like improved hazard maps and evacuation plans), limited failure (designing infrastructure networks, especially power grids, to shutdown in pieces instead of wholes), rapid rebounds (initiating preemptive response strategies, like creating fleets of portable generators), and constantly learning. Read All »