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The Role of Advanced Technologies in Structural Engineering for More Resilient Communities Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
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5 How Are Cities Thinking about the Role of Technologies and Structural Engineering for the Future?
Pages 31-33

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From page 31...
... Current urban systems were designed and developed during a time of climate stationarity. Brown drew from a 2008 article in Science, which defines stationarity as the idea that "natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability," and that stationarity "is a foundational concept that permeates training and practice in water resource engineering." 2 In the past, climate stationarity allowed for rational investments in large-scale infrastructure.
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From page 32...
... Brown asked: what is a resilient city? With reference to water, he cited Howard Neukrug, Brown's colleague and former commissioner of the Philadelphia water department, who described the water sector's situation as follows: "Rising tides, water scarcity, floods, legacy and emerging contaminants, extreme storms, the threat of terrorism, non-stationarity, and piping systems built in the 19th century combined with 20th century technologies have left us with little choice but to actively renew our thinking about the relation of water to our cities, our budgets, and our future." 3 This implies that every city is a unique and complex combination of interests and forces with diverse expectations.
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From page 33...
... Southern California's "H2love," 6 a public service campaign, is working to change public concern and participation in this way. While campaigns like H2love demonstrate methods of promoting community change, Brown identified more complex questions for creating urban resilience, such as: how to balance the standardization of codes and practices with the benefits of innovation and locally developed solutions; whether performance-based codes can be established to facilitate that balance; the degree to which operational decisions rely on artificial intelligence; and how to protect against hacking and cyber-attacks, among others.
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  • urban water
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  • living heart
  • subsequent climatic

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  • recovery process
  • century combined

  • unchanging envelope
  • community change
  • climate stationarity
  • change public
  • process produces

  • sound decision
  • extreme weather
  • responsible enablers
  • economic inequalities
  • stationarity poses


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