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3 Resilience and Adaptation
Pages 13-18

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From page 13...
... Panelists focused their remarks on notable research efforts into environmental impact reduction, resilient infrastructure, and adaptation measures. From Recovery to Resiliency For Glen Daigger, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, CH2M Hill, Inc., the key term is not "sustainability" but "resiliency." "What will it take," he asked, "to create resilient cities?
From page 14...
... Peacock cited the coastal hazard planning tool kit developed for the Texas coast as an example of how ‘visualization tools' could be used to convey valuable information to citizens and policy makers alike that could help make urban communities more resilient. The tool kit, which was funded by the Texas Sea Grant Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
From page 15...
... The goal is to "provide critical information that is credible and science-based but, at the same time, can highlight significant gaps in knowledge." Like other participants, Kuipers proclaimed that coastal communities in the United States face a unique set of challenges because of the enormous investments that have been made in infrastructure and the high risks this infrastructure faces due to storms and rising sea levels. The challenge is to provide these communities with science-based information and services that can help them "make better decisions." As one example, Kuiper spoke about how public officials in Wilmington, Delaware, would like to build a new wastewater treatment facility.
From page 16...
... Find the right balance for managing competition between land, water and biodiversity, she seemed to be saying, "and we will have begun to map a proper course for sustainability." Sophisticated computerized tools, Wardrop said in comments that closely tracked those of Peacock and Kuipers, are now available to accurately project what the ecosystem tradeoffs will be when pursuing specific land use policies. But she quickly added that "there has often been a mismatch between the scale at which we describe the ecosystem benefits when pursuing these measures and the scale at which we describe the socioeconomic benefits." Put another way, we have yet to develop an analytical tool that can consistently illustrate how "smart" ecosystem management will render short-term impacts for social well being.
From page 17...
... For example, instructions for reacting to an earthquake were reduced to this: "drop, cover and hold on." As Werkheiser explained, project organizers wanted to alter the "mindset" of the people living on the fault line from the prevailing passive attitude of "we live here and accept earthquakes as inevitable," to an attitude of informed resolve: "we live here and want to prepare for earthquakes, because we know they will occur." In the parlance of the scientific community, the USGS hoped the project would help shift discussions from a focus on "vulnerability" to a focus on "resilience" ―to transform residents' fatalism that "we can't do much about earthquakes" to a conviction that "though we can't prevent earthquakes, we can mitigate their impacts." Scientists working for federal agencies, Werkheiser contended, could make significant contributions to this proactive strategy. For example, using sophisticated modeling techniques, they could forecast the ground motion that would accompany an earthquake of a given magnitude in a given location.
From page 18...
... The gathering of data is essential, Stephenson Hawk noted. Nevertheless, like Werkheiser, she emphasized that science-based sustainable development will ultimately depend on moving scientific data and information beyond scientific circles to the larger policy community and lay public.


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