So in the last chapter,
we talked about identifying threats.
In this chapter, we're going to focus on vulnerabilities,
looking to those areas of your community that are
at risk from flood hazards, and that can help
us start to develop that prior advertised action plan
for building resilience and dealing with the threats and
vulnerabilities in our communities.
The first thing we want to talk about
is the built environment that's going to be
what's most at risk from flooding.
And the one, of course, that affects the most people.
When they lose their home, they lose their business.
So we want to start by inventory
in our structures, looking at where we
see encroachment of structures in vulnerable environments.
So if we're thinking about historic development, maybe
that was built in the flood plain areas
that we know have a flood risk, that's
going to be your starting point.
We want to think about as our community
has grown, where we're seeing new flooding threats,
and if that's affecting other areas of our
community that have structures on them.
We want to think about that and
put together an idea of where we're
at risk from flooding damaging our structures.
We want to think about the design of structures.
Are they built for the environment?
So the image here, of course, is
coastal homes that are built on stilts.
The intention of that, of course, is to
allow the water to flow up and under
the homes without actually damaging the structure themselves.
That works in normal events.
But when we see unusually strong events are
unusually high tides or Hurricanes or flooding storm
surge events caused by major Hurricanes.
Those homes aren't designed
necessarily to withstand that.
So we want to think about how the
homes were built or how the structures were
built and whether they're appropriate for their location.
We want to think about structure age.
Older homes can sometimes fare better than
newly built homes because they were actually
more effectively designed for the environment, and
maintenance becomes an issue.
The potential vulnerability to flood
is an issue of maintenance.
If we have poorly maintained buildings, that's going
to allow more access points for water to
get inside of a structure, create some challenges
there, and create problems going forward.
So again, an issue of
planning, building code enforcement.
Those types of issues are something we need
to consider as we're developing our structural inventory.
And we want to think about
the historic buildings in our communities.
Because older buildings oftentimes
are a community touchstone.
They can be a source of identity
and character and pride in our community.
We want to make sure that we have a good
understanding of where those are located, how they can be
better protected, because they are such an important part of
the urban fabric and the character of our communities.
So we want to develop an inventory.
This is where GIS can be a super helpful
Tool I'm sure you all are all familiar with
GIS and it's basic functionality, but that makes doing
this type of mapping activity much more easy.
And you want to start thinking
about the vulnerability of those structures.
So as you're going through and developing your
inventory, that's going to help you start to
highlight particularly vulnerable structures and parts of your
community that are particularly at risk from flooding.
So that may be based on
their location, their use or purpose.
So it may be something like a senior center or
a school or a hospital that's particularly at risk if
there were to be flooding in that area or other
characteristics of the structure that make it vulnerable, maybe age,
lack of maintenance, other things that may make a building
more at risk than others.
You want to capture that information and put it
into your database to make sure you have that
thorough understanding and start to prioritize areas most at
risk based on the characteristics of the structures there.
And when we think about mitigation, oftentimes
our attention is most focused on those
areas of high economic value.
So we look at those areas maybe that have
industrial uses or have high commercial value, those types
of things, because that's the area where if there
is damage done, it's going to have the greatest
economic impact on our community.
And that creates a challenge.
Sometimes when we're putting so much attention and
focus on those areas of high economic value
that we can sometimes neglect lower income neighborhoods,
areas that may be more physically vulnerable.
But because we're putting the attention on the
areas of high economic value, we're not putting
the same attention there and leaves those areas
more at risk than they otherwise might be.
So we need to consider this idea of equity in
our planning for flooding to make sure that we're protecting
all of our residents in the face of this hazard.
So we also want to
think about our critical infrastructure.
Part of that is certainly
the public safety infrastructure.
Think again about the example of New Orleans where we
have those massive pumps that are designed to get the
water out of New Orleans, because if you look at
the topography of that city, it's essentially a giant bowl.
There's the Mississippi River on one
side, like Ponch Trail on another.
And essentially all the water that flows into the
city of New Orleans has to get pumped out
because it's lower than the surrounding water bodies.
And so it's dependent on these massive pumps,
even during non rain events, just to pump
any water that collects out of the city.
So if we think about during a major flood event,
those pumps have to work overtime to keep the city
dry, and they have to have access to power.
So that means either there's local generation that's available,
bringing electricity to those pumps or on site generators
that have enough fuel to continue working.
So if you think about a major event
like a Hurricane, major flooding events not only
do you have the issue of those pumps
being potentially damaged by the flood event itself?
But you also have the issue of getting
fuel to keep them running in the event.
The power lines are down, other generation sources are
down, and they're reliant on their onsite generators.
They need fuel, and they need a lot of it.
So keeping that fuel supply running can become a
significant challenge when we experience these major events.
So that's an example of that single point
of failure or that lack of redundancy that
a lot of our conventional flooding approach takes.
When we have that point of failure, they can
create massive problems when those pumps go down.
So we also want to think about public safety buildings.
Right.
Our facilities where we have fire
trucks and other rescue equipment.
We want to make sure that those are going
to be accessible during events, that the first responders
can get there to get their equipment, get out
and start saving people if they need to.
We want to think about hospitals, of course,
because those are oftentimes very vulnerable to flooding,
because it's hard to evacuate people from hospitals.
And that's another area that's dependent on electricity, on
natural gas, that basic infrastructure to make sure people
have the equipment they need to stay alive.
So we also don't want
to overlook our natural infrastructure.
This is part of the ecosystem
services that nature provides to us.
They can be a significant help in dealing with floods.
The natural systems around us, wetlands, floodplains, forests,
those resources absorb a ton of water.
They act as basically sponges, absorbing rainfall and storm
water and making it so that we don't have
to deal with it with an artificial system.
So we also get economic services
from our natural infrastructure, things like
fisheries, tourism, carbon absorption. Right.
There's lots of positives that come
from preserving our natural infrastructure.
So we want to have that as part of our planning.
We want to make sure that we understand
where we're seeing challenges to the natural environment.
So if we're seeing maybe coastal erosion
or a loss of wetlands, we want
to consider strategies to mitigate that.
If we're seeing forests being lost, for example, by suburban
development, we want to make sure that we're preserving as
much of that area as we can because of the
benefits we get in regards to flooding as well as
other environmental issues that we're facing.
We also want to consider the social conditions
within our community, the social vulnerability that our
community may be facing because the impacts from
flooding and other natural hazards aren't equitable.
Right.
Certain populations tend to have a
higher impact from these events.
They live in more vulnerable areas typically, so they're
going to be more affected during the event.
They also tend to have less capacity to respond.
So when an event happens, if they lose their
home, maybe they don't have insurance or they don't
have adequate insurance, they don't have the resources to
relocate, stay in a hotel for a week or
two while the flood event is happening or whatever.
So they lack capacity to respond effectively.
Our development patterns, patterns of inequality, housing, accessibility, all
of these issues contribute to the vulnerability of our
citizens, and we want to make sure that as
planners, we have a role in addressing the social
vulnerability and building the capacity of our citizens because
they're the ones who are going to be most
affected by these events, and we need to make
sure they have the capacity to respond effectively.
So when we start looking at social
vulnerability, there are some key factors that
we can take into consideration.
So education matters significantly because when
people have higher education, they tend
to have higher economic capacity.
They also have a higher likelihood to be informed
and aware of what's going on to make sure
that they know, oh, there's floods coming, we need
to evacuate or whatever it might be.
They also tend to have more capacity to deal with
bureaucracy and the response process, of dealing with FEMA paperwork,
and all of those things that come with trying to
rebuild your life after a flood event.
People with higher education tend to have more capacity
to manage that process and respond more effectively.
Unemployment can be a significant issue because if
you have high unemployment rates in your community,
obviously they're going to have less financial capacity
to respond to an event, and they're also
going to be less connected to your community.
So when a flood event occurs, if they
are displaced, they may just relocate to another
community and say, you know what?
I had to evacuate what we saw with
Katrina, for example, when people left Katrina, a
lot of those folks didn't come back.
So if you look at the demographics of New Orleans
pre and post Katrina, what you see after Katrina is
a much wider and a much richer and a much
smaller city than what was there before Katrina.
So we also want to think about our disabled population.
Certainly those folks oftentimes have
more difficulty in evacuating.
They're going to have more needs during an event.
So we want to make sure that we have
a plan in place for dealing with that population.
And you can kind of walk through and see some
of the issues with other characteristics that are going to
drive our response not going to go through all of
these, but it gives you an idea of some of
the things that you want to look at in terms
of the characteristics of your community.
This is another area where planners have a key
role because we are involved in building demographic analysis.
We're part of understanding the characteristics of our
community, and we can provide this information when
we're looking at doing resilience planning.
Some other things you want
to think about is relationships.
I've talked a lot about those.
You want to make sure that you have
outreach and education and relationships built in your
community to build levels of trust.
So when you are providing communication and
information to people, they trust you as
a resource in providing that information.
You want to make sure that you have that
open communication and transparent decision making because people have
a right to know about the decisions and have
influence in the decisions that are affecting them.
So you want to make sure you have all
of that in place as you're planning for flood
events to make sure that people are aware of
what's going on and how they can properly respond.
And we want to talk about economic
characteristics as well, looking at the economic
conditions in your community and some of
the vulnerabilities that may come from that.
So you want to start with looking at your
primary employers who are employing people in your community.
What's their vulnerability to particular hazards?
How can you help them be more prepared
and more responsive in the face of disasters?
Do you want to look at some
of the economic drivers in your community?
Do you have a University?
Do you have a military base? Right.
Those are drivers that bring economic opportunity to
your community and you want to make sure
that you're working with them as resources.
So you want to think about
vulnerabilities to your economic drivers.
You want to think about loss of
communications, loss of power, loss of access. Right?
When flood events do occur, how can we
make sure that we understand what threat that
poses to our major employers in primary industries?
But we also want to make sure how we can respond
effectively to get them back online as soon as possible.
So you want to make sure that you're communicating with
your businesses, that you have that relationship with them to
understand their concerns and their challenges and that you have
a plan in place to help them recover.
And if you look at a community that has
maybe limited economic diversity, if there's maybe one major
employer in town that's going to increase the overall
vulnerability in that community because they're dependent on that
one source of primary employment.
So you want to make sure that you're building economic
diversity as part of your resilience planning, to make sure
you're you don't have all your eggs in one basket
and that when events do occur, there's more options and
more opportunities for businesses to stay afloat and come back
once the flood event passes.