Monday, November 26, 2012

Extreme Weather Hard on Infrastructure


Hurricane Sandy highlighted the vulnerability of our infrastructure to extreme weather.  New York’s subways were severely damaged and travel to and from New England by train or airplane was delayed or cancelled.  People were without power for days, weeks for some.

This is only one example we could draw from 2012.  Extreme heat and drought troubled much of the nation this summer.

It is time to start thinking about how we live with our environment in new ways.  This is not simply a matter of climate change and the effects of human activity on climate and weather.  It is about what kind of lives we want to live, what kind of infrastructure we need to live it, what we consider acceptable in terms of infrastructure reliability, water and air quality, transportation methods and routes, locus of control, and the complex of manmade and natural systems we live in on local, regional, national and global scales.  Some are even seeing opportunities in what others are seeing as blunt problems needing heaving engineering answers.

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1 comment:

  1. If there is good Infrastructure to buiild up, so may be there could be not so much effect..

    ReplyDelete