Vulnerability

In writing about the importance of promoting private enterprise, as well as in many other sections of my work, I suggested an almost near certainty that the risk management industry eventually will facilitate resilience and structural adaptivity in our built environment.  In my larger draft, I included a short section about this, which I am posting below (somewhat revised).  I believe it is beneficial to share this section now in order to explain my optimism for resilience. (I also wrote short sections on Time, Rapid Change, Optimism, A Futurist Perspective, and The Human Factor but do not necessarily intend to post them here.)

The future will be all about risk and trying to find protection from the rapidly increasing threats to our world as we advance in population size, social/cultural/economic complexity, and cutting-edge science and technology.  Risk underwriting will play a big role in how well or how poorly we adapt to accelerating change. 

Here are some more examples of how I propose that structural adaptivity could be applied as a leading principle for resilient development in the US over the next 20-50-100 years.  These are intended to support my conviction that structural adaptivity is the only logical approach to advancing our built environment for a rapidly changing, uncertain, unpredictable future.  I am hoping that others will review these concepts and propose their own personal and team-researched applications of the principle.

In re-balancing our nation, do so by major watersheds.  I propose that the re-balancing of our nation’s urban development (as I discussed before) should be based on the locations and characteristics of our major watersheds.  All major urban development regions should have a long-term dependable natural source of fresh water. 

Roasted by a pulse. Credit: arbyreed, CC BY-NC-SA

homelandsecuritynewswire.com - by Anders Sandberg - August 12, 2014

In 1962, a high-altitude Pacific nuclear test caused electrical damage 1,400 km away in Hawaii. A powerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP) – created either by a solar storm or a high-altitude nuclear explosion — poses a threat to regions dependent on electricity, as such pulses could cause outages lasting from two weeks to two years. The main problem is the availability of spare transformers. Superstorm Sandy’s worst effects were in a single location. In the case of a big EMP surge, replacement transformers would be needed in hundreds of locations at the same time. The cost of an EMP pulse to the U.S. economy would likely be in the range of $500 million to $2.6 trillion. A report by the U.S. National Academies was even more pessimistic, guessing at a higher range and a multi-year recovery. Besides disrupting electricity such storms can also destroy satellites, disrupt GPS navigation, and make other parts of the infrastructure fail.

As a follow-up to my post titled A New Approach, following below are several examples of how I propose that structural adaptivity should be applied as a guiding principle for future growth and development in the US.  As I explained before, I believe that structural adaptivity is the only logical approach to building our man-made environment for a rapidly changing, uncertain, unpredictable future.

Bus Rapid Transit.  Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a system of individual self-propelled vehicles (often several linked together) that can and do travel on conventional streets and highways, on dedicated lanes on surface streets, and/or on separate intersection-free busways dedicated to buses only.  Likewise, the rapid transit buses can leave their normal routes of travel and enter and leave most all areas of a city or region.  As a modern system providing rapid mass transit, it also normally has features similar to rail rapid transit, e.g., off-board fare collection, platform-level boarding, efficient and rapid scheduling, etc., and it oftentimes has traffic signaling priority at any street intersections.