Even as hard-hit areas of two of the country’s most developed regions push for normalcy after back-to-back hurricanes in early September, policymakers and construction industry experts are weighing the longer-term implications of the damage in Houston, Florida and the Caribbean from Harvey, Irma and now Maria—and how and whether infrastructure resiliency can be accelerated and how that will affect coastal development.
“Our infrastructure is aging and deteriorating. That makes situations worse,” says Mark Abkowitz, director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Environmental Management Studies. “It will be difficult to make urban areas more resilient to flooding. In some ways we have our hands tied behind our backs because we’ve allowed development along the coast to occur. We’re going to have to chip away at this problem.”
Samuel Brody, director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A&M University, noted in a 2011 book he co-authored on development and flood risk that Florida came out ahead of Texas in terms of soil, geography and planning for climate change. “We generally found Florida is better prepared and in a situation to address flooding problems, which showed up in per capita flood loss during our study period,” he says.
哈维飓风’s catastrophic rainfall could be a game changer.
The lessons learned from the 40-in.-average rainfall in Houston, which peaked at 52 in., and subsequent flooding will be a guidepost for every urban area in the world that is experiencing more frequent torrents, says Edgar Westerhof, national director of flood risk and resiliency for Arcadis North America. Rather than on 100-year and 500-year events, the focus should be on “how your urban environment functions during these kind of extremes,” he says, with smarter watershed planning. Westerhof and others advocate more natural systems and flood-zone risk education.
The storm may be the tipping point to move Texas to a more holistic approach to water management. For years, the state has been studying options for a coastal protection scheme after the near miss of Hurricane Ike in 2008, but leaders have been unable to move forward and largely eschewed a region-wide approach to water management.
维斯特霍夫（Westerhof）说，在哈维（Harvey）之后，“市政当局需要保持思想，并制定包括排水的沿海总体规划。不仅是休斯顿或加尔维斯顿。”
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谨慎验证
佛罗里达州也面临巨大的挑战。当艾尔玛（Irma）对波多黎各（Puerto Rico）的身分下降时，美国陆军工程兵团密切追踪了其进步，风和奥基乔比湖（Lake Okeechobee）的预计风暴潮和海拔高度，以确定围绕143英里泥土的赫伯特·胡佛·胡佛（Herbert Hoover Dike）的风险区域。工程师还对堤防和介词检查团队进行了彻底检查，并根据需要提供。
On Sept. 5, the Corps began a pre-storm drawdown of water in Lake Okeechobee—as much as 4,000 cu ft per second west to the Caloosahatchee Estuary and 1,800 cfs eastward to the St. Lucie. The lake stage then was 13.67 ft, below the 15.5-ft elevation that triggers increased surveillance, and Irma’s track forecast cone was still very broad, but the threat to Florida was clear.
“在某些方面，我们将双手绑在背后。我们允许沿海岸的发展进行。”
- 马克·阿布科维茨（Mark Abkowitz），Vanderbilt University
Experience with Irma has validated the caution.
9月18日，湖泊的湖泊负责人卡罗尔·伯恩斯坦（Carol Bernstein）在新闻发布会上说，该湖的处于15.5英尺，上升。工程部负责人Laureen Borochaner补充说，高程触发者增加了监视和检查频率，因为工程师预计渗漏和管道增加，尤其是在已知的堤防点上增加。
On Sept. 17, inflow to Lake Okeechobee was 36,000 cfs and had added 0.16 ft to the lake’s elevation in the previous 24 hours. Conservative inspection indicates the elevation could reach 16.5 or 17 ft. “At the current rate of inflow, if there is no more rain, the level will reach its peak within two weeks,” she said.
The dike has been the focus of an active rehabilitation program to replace control structures and install cutoff walls, Bernstein said. Construction has been completed on 21.4 miles of the cutoff wall, and 35 miles remain to be built. Completion is scheduled for 2025.
While Jacksonville, Fla. did not suffer a direct hit from Irma, two neighborhoods suffered severe flooding. In one, the Riverside area, “you had high water that people had not seen in a very long time, maybe more than 25 years,” says Christopher Brown, associate professor of civil engineering at the University of North Florida. “I think the city would have to consider things like floodwalls along portions of Riverside.”
He cites their effectiveness in other cities such as St. Louis, which has a 50-ft-tall wall. A 5- to 10-ft wall would work for Jacksonville, Brown contends. “There could be a combination of walls, floodwalls, pump stations and maybe even a levee,” he adds.
研究人员说，但是这座城市需要超越工程学。人们谈论这些极端风暴。我们需要为更多此类工作做准备。我们曾经将它们视为不经常发生的奇怪组合，但是我相信频率将会增加，因为城市化……气候变化是我们必须准备的事情。”
New Options
Meanwhile, cities, utilities and construction professionals are scrambling to recover and be ready for the next big one—in this still unfolding hurricane season and others in the future.
休斯顿市长西尔维斯特·特纳（Sylvester Turner）于9月14日任命前壳牌石油公司总裁马文·奥杜姆（Marvin Odum）担任该市首席恢复官。特纳说，他希望卡特里娜飓风过后壳牌康复的领导人奥杜姆（Odum）建议大胆的举动休斯顿（Houston）为下一场暴风雨做好准备。
同样，哈里斯县行政县法官埃德·埃米特（Ed Emmet）表示，所有选择都在桌上改善快速增长地区的洪水控制。目前，该地区侧重于计划阶段的恢复和排水项目。18luck官网
County road crews worked 24/7 shifts to repair in daysan inundated highway那个正常的会花费数周的时间。
德克萨斯州州长格雷格·雅培（Greg Abbott）（R）还成立了一个工作队，以确定如何重建由德克萨斯州A＆M大学校长约翰·夏普（John Sharp）领导的国家。德克萨斯州设计公司Freese＆Nichols董事长Bob Pence说：“我们正在努力在工作队面前提供以前的计划和需求的投入。”返回操作。
“今天，我们在维尔京群岛有122人骑着猫5风暴……因为我们知道我们必须做出很快的反应。”
– Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, Army工程师兵团指挥官
To restore power that was lost to as many as 7.8 million Southeast customer accounts,utilities have mustered thousands of workersand implemented strategies for hardening that they learned from their Northeast peers during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Daniel P. McQuade, AECOM Group construction services president, says “one of the most critical enablers of a faster and more effective recovery from storms such as Harvey and Irma is thorough preparation of active construction sites.”
他说工作人员降低了塔式起重机的部分expedited concrete pours of all open decking on its sites. Even so,partial collapses occurredat three south Florida tower sites not linked to the firm.
Jamie Cook, construction sector analyst for Credit Suisse, says most investor calls to the firm last week focused on financial impacts on public firms and their projects in storm-affected areas. She said affected firms “have the abilityto declare a不可抗力event对于目前正在建设的项目的命名风暴。”18luck官网预报全球洞察力预测，这两种风暴总计至少3000亿美元的经济影响。
"Immediate impacts from the storms could include unscheduled downtime, and perhaps an uptick in FEMA orders. Expectations regarding the medium term (6-9 months) should be managed, however, as true reconstruction will probably not commence in earnest until insurance recoveries start to trickle in, said Brent Thielmann, construction sector analyst for D.A. Davidson Co. in a Sept. 19 investors' note. "The long term impact of the storms will be felt for years, but will be difficult to differentiate from fundamental demand, particularly in Houston, which is already the nation’s largest homebuilding market. Short-term E&C and heavy materials suppliers operating in these regions will see negative impacts, although interestingly no companies reduced annual guidance."
一些能量点观察者预测了更多project start delaysin the hard-hit Gulf Coast region.
哈里斯县洪水管制运营总监马特·泽夫（Matt Zeve）表示，该县正在与联邦，州和地方机构合作，以确保金钱来修复风暴损失，并为10亿美元的资本改善项目提供了一些积压，现在仅以6000万美元的价格进步18luck官网一年，其中一些与工程兵团相关。Zeve说，代理商还正在制定一项全面的买断计划，以购买一再淹没或在高风险地区的房屋。他说，这项工作可能包括对不愿房主的收购。
联邦assistance and funding will be critical in providing relief, recovery and reconstruction assistance to Texas, Florida and other areas hit by the still-unfolding stream of hurricanes.
“We have always designed ourselves to be able to meet two of these disasters and do them at once, and I think FEMA prides itself on doing the same. But when you throw three or four together, that’s when you have to be very innovative,” Army Corps of Engineers Commander Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite told ENR in an interview Sept. 19.
He says the Corps has deployed 350 people to Harvey-affected areas, and now has 122 in the U.S. Virgin islands awaiting Hurricane Maria, “riding through a Cat 5 storm only because we know … we have to respond very fast when it comes to power generation, temporary roofs and debris removal.”
预计将是一系列紧急救灾措施的第一个是为在风暴遭受的地区工作的机构提供153亿美元。特朗普总统于9月8日签署的措施为联邦紧急救援局以及可用于基础设施的社区发展块拨款提供了74亿美元的措施。
该立法还将洪水保险计划扩展到12月8日；authorization had been set to expire on Sept. 30. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said in a Sept. 10 TV interview that Congress will take up a second disaster relief bill in mid-October and Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, told reporters in a Sept. 11 White House briefing that one or two additional follow-up measures could follow.
不完美的解决方案
With all plans implemented, Harris County’s Zeve said that he expects flooding would be lessened in the event of a major rainfall, but not completely eliminated. “Engineers can do anything, but no engineering criteria is designed for 40 inches of rain,” he says. Houston is drained by hundreds of creeks and several bayous. Ditches, roads and highways are designed to carry runoff to those creeks. But over the years, development in Houston and Harris County has left fewer and fewer places for the water to go.
“At what point do engineering ethics require you to speak out when a client refuses to acknowledge that climate change is happening?”
- 吉姆·布莱克本（Jim Blackburn），赖斯大学工程教授
“It’s just taking water off your property and putting it somewhere else, and there are fewer somewhere elses,” says Vanderbilt’s Abkowitz, also a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “It’s basically promoting flooding.”
Development also fragments natural drainage systems and has covered prairie land that could absorb as much as 11 in. of water within the first hour of a rainfall, says Texas A&M’s Brody.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, former Corps of Engineers commander and now a now senior advisor at Dawson & Associates, says a lot will hinge on whether Houston can gain money from Congress up front like New Orleans did after Hurricane Katrina.
休斯顿的弹性总监斯蒂芬·科斯特洛（Stephen Costello）说：“既然我们已经举办了圣经活动，其中很多是围绕资金而围绕资金，您可以真正发挥创造力。”
但是，分区不是其中之一。休斯顿（Houston）是自称“无限制的城市”，没有分区，科斯特洛（Costello）表示不会改变。Costello说，分区本来会导致一个被淹没的区域城市。
休斯顿可能重新审视典章,criteria for parcel development. The city is responsible for water from rooftops to bayous. In 2010, it implemented a program to upgrade drainage infrastructure and roads. Costello says there is only so much the city can do. The drainage basin, the area’s creeks and bayous, are managed by the county flood district.
Additionally, two Corps of Engineers reservoirs built in the 1940s, Addicks and Barker, proved inadequate during Harvey and the Corps had to release water into neighborhoods to prevent worse flooding and potential dam failure.
“You are never going to be able to bring risk to zero,” says Corps chief Semonite. “These reservoirs were built around 70 years ago, to be able to handle a certain load. This particular storm far exceeded what was ever in those reservoirs in the past. ” He adds that “you have to manage the risk to figure out what … governments can afford when it comes to flood control, and compliment that through zoning, smart development, insurance programs and all those other pieces.”
已经讨论了第三个水库的计划多年，自哈维以来就引起了新的兴趣。
The county has a no-impact policy that prevents Houston from building projects that will add more water to the bayou. Yet a 2016 report that examined Houston’s 2010 “Rebuild Houston” program to improve drainage and roads says that the city’s construction of below-grade roads to carry stormwater to the bayous is having an impact.
报告称：“目前的标准鼓励街道在海拔中降低，从而导致更频繁地洪水泛滥，更深的洪水深度延长了较长的持续时间。”“当前的标准会产生有缺陷的错误安全感。通常，只有在提出错误假设的情况下，在暴风雨事件中，下游Bayou，流，支流或开放通道基本上是空的，才能实现此标准。这不是可能发生的。”在休斯顿，在洪水平原的1分中标准的设计也很差。
就在新利luckHarvey发现FEMA的100年洪泛区地图未能捕获IKE飓风造成的75％的洪水破坏，2007年的热带风暴Erin和2001年的Allison，以及2006年和2009年的两次暴风雨。
Jim Blackburn, co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster Center at Rice University in Houston and a professor of civil and environmental engineering, suggests that until the standards are changed to reflect the most recent storms, engineers should look to the 500-year flood standard. But even then, he says, the onus is on engineers to look beyond standards when designing new infrastructure and buildings.
“A Texas engineer’s first obligation is to protect the public. At what point do engineering ethics require you to speak out when a client refuses to acknowledge that climate change is happening,” he says. “At what point do you refuse to design to an old standard that has repeatedly shown to be inadequate?”
德克萨斯州A＆M的布罗迪说，休斯顿的洪水是弹性破裂的症状，并补充说，必须查看更广泛的地区和对整个系统的系统评价。“我希望，”他说。“我必须乐观，这是一个改变的机会。”
帕姆·拉德克·罗素（Pam Radtke Russell）和黛布拉·鲁宾（Debra K.
