January 25, 2012
Socio-Economic Factors in Disasters
by Eve Hinman
The Multihazard Mitigation Council (MMC) has been a dormant group within the National Institute of Building Sciences for a number of years. It is known for the oft quoted factoid that every dollar invested in mitigation reduces $4 in future avoided losses when disaster strikes. Those odds are better than the stock market these days! Especially when you consider that disaster is virtually guaranteed to happen during the lifetime of a building. This may sound bold, but consider that the US has sustained a record $35B in damages this year – and that was in August! Welcome to the new "normal" in disasters.
At the MMC annual meeting on December 7th in DC, I was pleased to see that the MMC is newly invigorated and tackling the key multi-hazard issues of the 21st century. The first decade of this new century is showing itself to be unlike anything we have seen before. We are seeing a heighten hazard environment in which high magnitude storms, earthquakes, and tsunami events are occurring more frequently. This is coming at a time when our aging infrastructure is crumbling, further exacerbating the issue. The problem does not end here. Our growing population is pushing our sagging, tired infrastructure far beyond intended serviceability limits. The threat of terrorist attack seems moot in this world where infrastructure is more likely to fall down than be blown up.
We are effectively investing in the past and not the future. The aging Baby Boomers are doing well compared to our aging infrastructure. The Boomers at least get their Social Security checks, while our children are facing a world without reliable transportation, water, sanitation, or power. These are typically not issues that Structural Engineers have been trained to think about. The structure is only a small part of the overall system. Who cares if the structure remains standing if failure of lifelines result in loss of the building's ability to function.
Our current approach of predicting the frequency, severity, and consequence of hazards needs a radical overhaul and quickly. It is necessary to develop new methods to prioritize hazards and their impact on infrastructure nationwide in order to effectively manage the limited pool of available funds, which fuel efforts to maintain critical systems. Without continued function of these lifelines, efforts to achieve building resilience will be lost. An even more vexing issue is that the infrastructure systems are highly complex and interrelated. The infrastructure systems of the 21st century need both the ability to support one another in an effort to adapt to unknown conditions and, at the same time, the ability to function independently when needed. Consequently, solutions to protect infrastructure will be challenged by the need to better understand which utilities are essential to our ability to cope with and function in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.
If we, as structural engineers, are to remain in the discussion we need to become more conversant in economic and social issues that will dictate hazard mitigation decisions. Disaster management efforts are being met with new challenges that require innovative solutions.
Share: