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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

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A

Takeaways and Observations by Domain

This appendix provides key participant comments, takeaways, and observations by domain, by scenario, and by exercise from Days 1 and 2. These takeaways (see Tables A-1 through A-5) map to the scenario-specific takeaways and observations outlined in the body of this proceedings and ultimately drive the workshop-wide takeaways highlighted in the Summary.

All of the takeaways reflect comments and discussions at the workshop. Takeaways are presented as having been said by workshop participants. Readers should not regard these as carrying the weight of recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The views cited are not necessarily consensus views of the group, and the group was not composed to meet National Academies standards for study committees that make consensus findings and recommendations. The takeaways do reflect key ideas presented or discussed by one or more workshop participants, so the material presented here could be considered suggestions coming from informed individuals in the process.

TABLE A-1 Overview of Workshop-wide Key Takeaways

Necessity of community engagement

Emphasizing local leadership
Promoting community involvement
Improving communications and transparency

Call to overcome long-standing obstacles

Moving from survivability to thrivability
Focusing on prevention in addition to response
Incorporating resilience and equity consistently

Need to move into the future

Building up data and analysis
Embracing technology and modernization
Balancing regulations versus incentives carefully

Page 56 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

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TABLE A-2 Key Takeaways by Domain, by Scenario, and by Exercise: Petrochemical Industry Functions

Petrochemical Industry Functions
Hurricane Scenario
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: Formulating projects that will increase infrastructure resilience requires evaluating risk tolerance and trade-offs: what does the community seek to avoid (e.g., storm surge above a particular height at a specific type of infrastructure) and how are stakeholders willing to pay to buy down that risk? Investing in retail fuel station resilience is important. This includes prioritizing and requiring backup power generation and making stations “anchor institutions,” for priority power restoration, but it is complicated by the complex governance network of fuel stations and varying regulations across states. There would be benefit from petroleum industry owners upgrading production and refining infrastructure (e.g., use “smart tanks” capable of self-monitoring, auto shutoff, remote inspection after event), which would mitigate fallout and limit downtime during a with-notice event, but there is no business reason for them to do so. This has stick (regulatory) and carrot (incentive) implications; prudent use of both could be good for both industry and the public sector. Participants cautioned against overreliance on the private sector to address hurricane-driven adverse impacts without incentivizing actions from the government. There will likely always be a shortage of critical supplies during a response; therefore, it is useful to decide beforehand who gets priority. This includes preplanning local and national priorities, both to limit where essential resources are allocated and so that national requirements for recovery, which local leaders may not even be aware of, do not derail response operations once they are underway. For example, the East Coast depends on fuel from the Gulf region, and that has to be accounted for when planning response and recovery operations.
Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)	Participants commented: Two types of resilient infrastructure investments are useful: (1) ones that make things better in the short term and (2) ones that address the root problem(s) in the long term. The shorter-term fixes help people deal with the effects of events, even if marginally. Also, people need to see short-term successes because the long-term solution may take a very long time to implement. It is beneficial to focus on preventing contamination in the first place, rather than just improving cleanup. Participants emphasized enhancing storage tank resilience and secondary tank protections. Getting back to normal—in oil production, refining, transport, retail fuel operations—is important because it benefits so much: individuals, society, and the economy. This thinking favors projects that support an expedited response to the event, but also prioritization of key activities outside the impact area (e.g.,

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

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	ensuring the availability of fuel in other parts of the country) for the sake of the economy. Projects that increase understanding of the damage petrochemical incidents do to the environment rather than just projects that contain the damage would be beneficial. If the likely consequences or impacts to the environment are better understood, efforts can be focused more effectively to build back smarter. Using new technologies to their best advantage is helpful, such as taking advantage of advances in sensor technology to allow the monitoring of flooded roadways and collecting samples in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane, or by creating smart fuel storage tanks. Driving action from the petroleum industry after an event requiring cleanup via sticks and carrots is tricky and requires very smart governance. Environmental, social, and governance regulations or best practices seem promising, but there is debate as to whether the government is the right entity to develop the regulations or document the best practices, or if it is better to get support from other agencies.
Protracted Oil Spill Scenario
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: Smarter regulation of the petroleum industry will likely support a more resilient Gulf. This includes stricter permitting and stronger government enforcement authorities and expertise to compel the responsible party to clean up in a timely manner. Oversight of legacy and abandoned infrastructure is another item that could be addressed through stricter permitting. The cost of maintaining and servicing aging petroleum infrastructure is a real challenge and a reason some owners walk away, resulting in ongoing public liabilities. R&D investments in petroleum infrastructure–related technology, which would prevent and better contain spills, are valuable investments. To improve response, there is a need to determine, with greater accuracy and more authority, information about a spill, such as the volume and impact of the spill, in ways that cannot be challenged by competing interests. Increase input from local leadership into response operations. Bringing in local leaders will not only increase trust in the response effort but can also help encourage that local priorities and concerns are taken into account. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (the “cleanup fund”) would benefit from further refinement to optimize the use of funds. For example, funds could be shared across federal agencies and used more flexibly to address local concerns and priorities, including R&D projects. Given that infrastructure owners are typically responsible for cleanup after an incident, owners have lessons learned that can be shared. Currently, there is no way of organizing or compelling this sharing and plenty of reasons for owners not to share (e.g., concerns of disclosing information that might provide a competitive advantage), which means future cleanup efforts do not necessarily benefit from past response experiences—both successes and failures.

Page 58 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

×

Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)

Participants commented:

Useful areas for attention include preventing spills in the first place and mitigating spills if and when they occur by requiring more of petroleum industry owners through stricter permitting, including requirements for recovery plans, better monitoring, and funds set aside for cleanup. This benefits the economy, society, and environment by decreasing the likelihood of a spill, increasing the likelihood that the responsible party has plans and capabilities needed to contain and clean up the spill, increasing funding for addressing environmental degradation, and increasing public trust in the government’s ability to manage or oversee oil spill responses.
Being resilient means responsibly spending money over time, not only in reaction to a big crisis.
It would be helpful to prioritize more studies of potential risks, such as landslides, and invest in predictive modeling so that permitters and industry can weigh the benefits of new drilling projects against the potential costs of a spill to society. It would be useful if predictive modeling considered multiple hazards occurring at the same time, to better anticipate future impacts.
There are still benefits to be gained, however, if the speed of cleanup and recovery improves, for multiple reasons: restoring the environment, the recovery of the local economy, and increasing trust in government response.
Public awareness and understanding of oil spill response is a special challenge. Government and industry stakeholders can build and maintain trust with the public through clear communications that do not add to the confusion. The government would benefit from faster, more detailed communications with the public to prevent misinformation. Better, faster public information sharing would be useful year-round.
Remove aging and abandoned infrastructure would help reduce risk and prevent future environmental degradation and pollution.

TABLE A-3 Key Takeaways by Domain, by Scenario, and by Exercise: Other Infrastructure Functions

Other Infrastructure Functions
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: After a storm, power should be restored as quickly as possible, followed by communications. Local communities often have priority power restoration lists established, and they would benefit from preparing lists for communications restoration too. It would be useful to map out key infrastructure system data, consolidated into a central repository, and accessible by those who need it. Restoring cell service is important. It enables communications and restores community confidence. A way to facilitate this moving forward is continuing to phase out big cell towers and instead build lots of smaller towers. There would be benefit in more focus on reopening waterways, in addition to highways and local roads; they are a good alternative route/delivery system.

Other Infrastructure Functions

Hurricane Scenario

Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)

Participants commented:

After a storm, power should be restored as quickly as possible, followed by communications. Local communities often have priority power restoration lists established, and they would benefit from preparing lists for communications restoration too. It would be useful to map out key infrastructure system data, consolidated into a central repository, and accessible by those who need it.
Restoring cell service is important. It enables communications and restores community confidence. A way to facilitate this moving forward is continuing to phase out big cell towers and instead build lots of smaller towers.
There would be benefit in more focus on reopening waterways, in addition to highways and local roads; they are a good alternative route/delivery system.

Page 59 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

×

	Public-private partnerships are essential, as resilience-building efforts (e.g., real estate developments, the construction of 5G cell towers, data sharing) more often than not fall outside the government’s regulatory purview. Incentivization of private efforts may have unintended consequences, however, and can lead to government provision to private partners with little payoff. To avoid this pitfall, it is important to continually assess projects’ effectiveness and hold partners to account. Relatedly, community engagement including grassroots stakeholders can sometimes provide a natural counterbalance. Community engagement and buy-in is important for projects to be successful, but it also requires incentives, especially for community members with limited time and resources. This includes funding projects that help communities in blue skies environment too, not only during a disaster, so communities see multiple benefits. Pre-event prioritization of projects is helpful to improve the allocation of limited resources available for investment after an emergency event.
Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)	Participants commented: Survivability is still a priority—people need their basic needs fulfilled, such as ensuring access to water. This also includes the ability to communicate with close connections, meaning friends and family. It would be useful if projects then moved quickly from restoring stability to improving the current conditions. Resilience is a mindset and methodology. Integrating resilience criteria into all aspects of day-to-day operations is an effective option to achieve resilience in the long term. Currently, it is relatively easy to get funds for rebuilding efforts, but harder to get funds for preparedness, general upkeep, or any of the “not exciting” routine needs that often get overlooked but are required for achieving long-term resilience; these items must be funded. Resilience also includes focusing on the function of a system, and investments should support the system approach more. Ensuring equity is a matter of both process and outcomes, two prongs that are self-reinforcing. Community engagement is essential but insufficient to ensure the ultimate outcome is equitable. Equity must be deliberately considered throughout project design and implementation. Relatedly, community engagement needs to integrate public education campaigns, extending beyond formal, easy-to-reach organizations (churches, schools, etc.) to include harder-to-reach individuals. Reliance on private wells, especially in rural areas, would benefit from more attention—monitoring, testing, repairing. Even though this type of project did not ultimately fall into the highest priority bin of projects during this workshop, there was significant discussion about this topic, as it impacted key priorities such as the community, vulnerable populations, and the environment.
Protracted Oil Spill Scenario
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: Make the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund more effective and impactful or consider a new and updated version of it. It would be beneficial to revisit and update the conditions for drawing upon the fund, in advance of an emergency. It would also be beneficial to consider realistic triggers to access funds and to consider administration by a third party, including a committee, nonprofit, or

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

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academic institute, through a trust. It is also important to remember that a single fund can run out during a catastrophic spill, so a comprehensive program with alternative funding sources too—grants, revolving funds, low-interest loans—would be useful.
More planning and coordination is needed to set up a dedicated Emergency Operations Center (EOC) or incident command and staging areas for a major spill. This requires large, dedicated land (e.g., 500 acres) in an area that allows equipment to be protected from weather and that has multiple access points.
There was attention to but also disagreement about burying flow lines, pipelines, and fiberoptic cables—and rock dumping on flow lines. Some participants were very much in favor of these actions, and others believe it is just not realistic because currents in the Gulf expose buried pipelines eventually and scatter rocks placed on top, which then have to be picked up to comply with regulations stating zero equipment can be left on the ocean floor. Also, it is very difficult to inspect a buried pipeline. All agreed more research and R&D would be useful.
Prioritizing “do no harm” when projects are planned is more effective than repairing damage after the fact.
Much emergency response planning is for severe events, but most will be low to medium in scale, so some projects should focus there as well.

Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)

Participants commented:

It would be beneficial to place focus on prevention of the spill in the first place.
Resilience includes hardening infrastructure, mitigating impacts, and bouncing back from impacts, but it also includes maintaining utilities—power and water—which are essential to maintaining resilience.
After we ensure our survival, we should focus on an increased quality of life. Although a sense of normalcy brings calm, disasters provide an opportunity to improve on the normal, so there is a need to return to stability followed by improvement. A response can promote equity and differentiate between a return to normalcy and effective recovery.
Projects must be led locally whenever possible, to be effective. All stakeholders should engage the whole community in efforts, provide opportunities for engagement, and not speak for anyone. They should support a public understanding of project implementation—explain what is happening and how money is spent.
Quantitative measures are good, but it is also important to be wary of what we are counting and make sure those things matter.
Information sharing is important, especially as grant-funded projects and environmental projects tend to get siloed and not understood as part of a bigger system or dataset.

Page 61 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

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TABLE A-4 Key Takeaways by Domain, by Scenario, and by Exercise: Society’s Needs

Society’s Needs
Hurricane Scenario
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: It is important to address problems that are well known and long-standing (e.g., residential power loss, damage from storm surge, long-term economic hardship) but that have still not been accomplished. The reasons that these problems were never fully addressed have included lack of funds, awareness, attention, vision, knowledge, or staffing. This could make a new influx of federal support vital to new projects’ success. A focus on housing, and returning to pre-hurricane habitability, is important. Housing is the basis for a functioning economy, environment, and society. Projects that either enable residents to return to normal or make their housing more resilient ahead of a storm, through resilient building codes or stronger building materials, are beneficial to many aspects of society. Housing projects should emphasize incentives for designing, testing, marketing, and building new construction (and making repairs) with sturdier, more durable, more environmentally friendly materials. Investing in infrastructure with resilience and inclusiveness in mind necessitates understanding who the population is and what its needs are. Health and housing projects are particularly sensitive to the needs of traditionally underserved, high-vulnerability populations. It would be helpful if projects increased this understanding. Enhance individual, small business, and local community resilience, reducing the reliance on state and federal resources to respond and recover to an event.
Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)	Participants commented: Impacting multiple prioritization criteria in the same project is important. The value of a project is how holistically it will improve conditions (e.g., better or updated flood-mapping analysis). Community involvement in a project is a priority. This includes a need to garner buy-in from the local communities who hear of grand projects that never come, or only understand the negative aspects of projects that have been implemented around them. Prioritization criteria related to project governance were very clear-cut. It usually came down to elements that support a coordinated vision for infrastructure improvement and bettering peoples’ lives, through strong, effective leadership. Participants noted that there is a lot of uncoordinated effort going on now that is not as helpful as it could be if it were better coordinated.
Protracted Oil Spill Scenario
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: There is concern with understanding baseline data in the Gulf region and how protracted oil spills might or might not affect the baseline. This includes data on direct impacts from protracted oil spills to beaches and aquatic environments near

Page 62 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

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shore, marine ecosystem impacts of slow-release oil spills in an area that already has natural oil seepage, and health and human safety from cleanup operations.
There is a lack of current baseline health and economic data, particularly among socially vulnerable populations. Projects should collect and establish data against which data from a spill event can be compared to inform response and recovery decision-making.
Employ effective public information campaigns to combat mis- and disinformation, build public trust and engagement, and encourage revenue-generating activities (e.g., tourism, seafood consumption), all of which contribute to community and business resilience in the wake of the spill. Improve communications and messaging to the local population as well as tourists and visitors. An evidence-based communications and messaging operation run by trusted actors is critical to managing oil spill fallout.
Promote opportunities for workers to be retrained in other industries or provide immediate funding to affected workers and small businesses. A variety of funding mechanisms can be employed to put these systems in place before another oil spill occurs.

Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)

Participants commented:

Clear and coordinated communication including trusted members of society is important. Informing the community and stakeholders of planning decisions and eliciting their feedback is important for projects to be successful.
Increasing understanding about protracted oil spills, particularly how oil spills impact the local population, is needed. Gaining a better understanding of actual impacts will give local authorities more information about how to mitigate those impacts.
Supporting business continuity and programs that will help keep businesses (and employment, tax base, tourism) afloat until recovery from the oil spill (or other impact) is complete, should be a focus area.
Supporting worker economic mobility by improving training and education programs that will allow workers to learn skills in different industries would be useful. Advocating for public-private partnerships in retraining before an oil spill happens so that when it does, the system is already set up to take in affected workers, would also be helpful.

TABLE A-5 Key Takeaways by Domain, by Scenario, and by Exercise: Environmental Protection

Environmental Protection
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: Focus on projects that protect, preserve, and restore the environment from natural disasters as well as account for the impacts of climate change. Robustness is multifaceted and can be achieved in different ways, ranging from building coastal barriers to changing zoning laws for petrochemical plants to address different aspects of infrastructure resilience. They are all important.

Environmental Protection

Hurricane Scenario

Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)

Participants commented:

Focus on projects that protect, preserve, and restore the environment from natural disasters as well as account for the impacts of climate change.
Robustness is multifaceted and can be achieved in different ways, ranging from building coastal barriers to changing zoning laws for petrochemical plants to address different aspects of infrastructure resilience. They are all important.

Page 63 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

×

	Data and information sharing should be encouraged and improved among organizations and with the community. Currently, many datasets that can benefit preparedness, mitigation, and/or response exist in silos, are poorly socialized, or simply are not leveraged in decision-making or in communications with the public. This problem is further exacerbated because the coast is under many agencies’ jurisdiction; for example, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) conducts sea-floor mapping, Port Authorities monitor the ports, and the USACE (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) and U.S. Coast Guard monitor other sections of the Gulf. Increased baseline data and monitoring would be helpful for detecting changes and impacts caused by hurricanes, sea level rise, and other hazards. Much of this data must be developed. While long-term restoration projects are central to environmental protection, meeting the community’s basic needs such as clean water in the aftermath of a natural disaster is very important. Safeguarding drinking water and wastewater infrastructure and carrying out decontamination projects contributes to short-term community resilience.
Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)	Participants commented: Projects that would have positive long-term impacts on the well-being of communities and ecosystems would be useful. Projects that focus on prevention or avoidance of downstream harm and reduce the need for additional, response-type projects should be prioritized. The “most-bang-for-your-buck” thinking would be beneficial, highlighting projects that address multiple stressors. Priority should be given to projects that would prevent more than one chain of adverse events from happening in the first place. There are additional specific characteristics that are beneficial for resilience projects, including addressing climate change, encouraging collaboration, leveraging existing data, maximizing positive impact on society, and promoting infrastructure systems/ecosystems to not just recover but also “spring forward.” While doing no harm or reducing harm to the environment is important, it is also important to think bigger and work to improve the environment. It is also key to consider that there might be projects that could do some harm to the environment in the short term but have a greater benefit to the environment in the long term. It would be useful to put more emphasis on research into river and coastal erosion.
Protracted Oil Spill Scenario
Project Brainstorming (P&P Exercise)	Participants commented: It would be useful if corporations were held responsible for environmental degradation and societal harm resulting from accidents of all scales. Consider issuing larger fines, requiring environmental offset projects, and requiring the establishment of funds for fisheries.

Page 64 Cite

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Takeaways and Observations by Domain." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Investing in Resilient Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26559.

×

With the bathymetric data now available, areas vulnerable to submarine landslides or other accidents are known. They should not be auctioned off for offshore drilling. It would be helpful if the BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) considered leasing standards and requirements that included provisions that would ban the abandonment of offshore infrastructure and make the organization responsible for their assets’ maintenance from cradle to grave.
Legal changes would help increase enforcement and accountability.
It would be useful to support prevention and early detection of hazards through enhancing and strengthening existing infrastructure (e.g., add sensors to pipelines to detect microfractures) and leveraging data from agencies like NOAA and NASA to inform decision-making.
Investments in more R&D into environmentally friendly response methods and tools (e.g., biodegradable surfactants and dissolvents) could help minimize the negative impacts of oil spills on the environment.
Investments in baseline studies on current or natural environmental conditions are lacking and prevent comprehensive assessment of an oil spill’s impact. Long-term epidemiology studies to understand impacts on human health are also lacking.

Project Prioritization (Prioritization Exercise)

Participants commented:

It would be useful to emphasize pragmatic and mitigation-focused projects. Given the scale of both active and abandoned offshore petroleum in the Gulf, it might be impossible to prevent oil spills from ever happening. Therefore, focus on making ecosystems and restoration projects resilient to oil spills when and if they occur.
Given the multiple stakeholders involved in oil spill detection and response, projects that improve coordination, collaboration, and information sharing among the relevant parties and with the public would be useful.
Projects that address multiple stressors, reduce downstream costs, and contribute to long-term well-being of ecosystems and communities would be useful.
“Hardening of Infrastructure” should include not just gray infrastructure but also green infrastructure, and it is useful to think of them together as a whole system.
Community members and local organizations can use techniques such as crowdsourcing and geotagging to conduct data collection on areas and species impacted by oil spills or tar balls.