Infrastructure

I would like to share the results of my research, thinking and writing with the U. S. Resilience System in the hopes that its viewers can incorporate some of it into their own work.  I also hope to receive feedback so I can improve my ideas.

My background is in city and regional planning.  More recently it has expanded to include futures research.  I believe that the much-needed resilience many of us are seeking can best be achieved if we are working on immediate plans and actions plus long-range plans and actions at the same time.  Immediate or short-term actions are seldom sufficient by themselves.

Resilience to the wide variety of critical problems and uncertainties we expect to face this century requires systemic changes in our country and world.  It requires changes in the way we think, act, organize and communicate, and in what and where we build.  We slowly build our man-made environment to fit our needs and then our man-made environment shapes and controls us for many decades - even after our needs have changed. 

submitted by Albert Gomez 

In November 2013, a full moon and high tides led to flooding in parts of the city, including here at Alton Road and 10th Street. Photograph: Corbis

Low-lying south Florida, at the front line of climate change in the US, will be swallowed as sea levels rise. Astonishingly, the population is growing, house prices are rising and building goes on. The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers

theguardian.com - by Robin McKie - July 11, 2014

A drive through the sticky Florida heat into Alton Road in Miami Beach can be an unexpectedly awkward business. Most of the boulevard, which runs north through the heart of the resort's most opulent palm-fringed real estate, has been reduced to a single lane that is hemmed in by bollards, road-closed signs, diggers, trucks, workmen, stacks of giant concrete cylinders and mounds of grey, foul-smelling earth.

                                (FOR THE INTERACTIVE MAP - CLICK ON THE MAP IMAGE BELOW)

The U.S. Energy Mapping System shows the web of natural gas pipelines, power plants and refineries that spread across the Louisiana Gulf Coast both on and off shore, an area hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Credit: EIA

climatecentral.org - by Bobby Magill - June 12, 2014

Imagine living near the Jersey Shore and a hurricane is barrelling in your direction, or living along the South Platte River in Colorado and an unexpected torrential downpour is flooding the river.

Are there natural gas, oil pipelines or electricity transmission lines that could break and leak in the flood or storm surge? Are oil and gas wells nearby that could flood and leach hydrocarbons into the river?

Those answers can be found online using the U.S. Energy Information Administration's interactive U.S. Energy Mapping System, which shows all the major energy infrastructure for any given address in the U.S.

submitted by Margery Schab

Federal Analysis Says Sabotage of Nine Key Substations Is Sufficient for Broad Outage

wsj.com - by Rebecca Smith - March 12, 2014

The U.S. could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out just nine of the country's 55,000 electric-transmission substations on a scorching summer day, according to a previously unreported federal analysis.

The study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concluded that coordinated attacks in each of the nation's three separate electric systems could cause the entire power network to collapse, people familiar with the research said.

A small number of the country's substations play an outsize role in keeping power flowing across large regions.

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News Release - FERC Directs Development of Physical Security Standards