The annals of human history have recorded a lot of natural disasters which prompted infrastructure decision support in some countries.
In the most recent years, man has experienced natural calamities worldwide – hurricanes Sandy and Katrina in the US, earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, and typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, to name a few.
These catastrophes not only affect the people who directly took the hit. Now, the reason why these force majeures are remembered is that they also have a great impact on society and the physical structure of the community that suffered the wrath of nature which comes in many forms.
These natural disasters affect critical infrastructures like transportation, water utilities, communication, energy, housing, health, etc.
These physical infrastructures are necessary elements of most economies. Regulatory authorities do rigid planning before urban and industrial infrastructure are approved and constructed.
Ensuring that these public utilities are safe is the main priority of these implementing authorities as part of the infrastructure natural disaster risk management plan. To anyone’s mind, the question of how resilient are these buildings remains.
And although it may seem that the impact of these events is one-sided, we only see the destruction of lives and public and private property in the news, the fact is, it can also go the other way around. Properly planned infrastructure can actually mitigate the effects of these natural disasters.
For flood-prone areas, such as the creation of dams, roads with proper drainage systems and other stormwater infrastructure are vital to moderate the onslaught of storm surges, water coming down from mountains, and water during incessant storm rains.
For earthquakes, engineers are already developing self-centring building systems in Japan, which is an earthquake-prone country.
Infrastructure asset management should include risk options from earthquake engineering analysis of edifices in areas regularly hit by earthquakes. This would be a significant stride for building and maintaining bridges, commercial and housing infrastructures, and public utilities.
For an urban community to withstand these natural events, implementing authorities must make an infrastructure natural disaster risk management plan tailored to the needs of a specific area, whether a place is flood-prone, earthquake-prone, or hurricane-prone.
Risk reduction strategies have a pivotal role in providing a systemic approach to disaster avoidance. As such, future investments must be made in the core planning process in building infrastructure for disaster prevention and the appropriate implementation of rebuilding or rehabilitation schemes for existing public and private utilities.
As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. It is appropriate to have prompt rehabilitation or reconstruction action plans after natural disaster destruction of critical infrastructure – but why rehabilitate when you can build assets that mitigate the effects of these natural calamities?