Director's Letter, Winter 2022
As we embark on a new year, I invite you to take a moment and reflect on 2021. This past year saw multiple natural disasters that affected everyone around the globe. From the Mount Semeru volcanic eruption in Indonesia and Super Typhoon Rai in the Philippines to the tornadoes in Kentucky in December and, going backwards in time, to Hurricane Ida in Louisiana in August, cyclones Tauktae in India last May and Seroja in Indonesia in April; it is not clear how to put these events in context -- especially in light of the ever-changing face of COVID-19.
Looking at Germany’s floods and China’s landslides in July, Haiti’s earthquake in August and Winter Storm Uri here in Texas last February — in addition to the severe heat in the Pacific Northwest in June and the severe drought in the western U.S. over the summer — it seems that we have experienced every kind of natural hazard the globe has to offer this past year. Considering the significant disruption and the more than 4,000-person combined death toll of the aforementioned events in addition to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to the COVID pandemic, it may be time to revisit our mental model of natural hazards and our resiliency to them.
Redefining natural hazards using a broader and more encompassing risk assessment-chronic-and -acute exposure-based construct, is a persuasive approach that allows us to add-in a much-needed timeline of adaptation and resiliency. It also allows for the consideration of natural stressors such as COVID-19 within the same holistic framework. Floods, tornadoes and earthquakes in this conceptual framework are acute stressors with potentially chronic cascading impacts that include environmental pollution and mental health effects. Infectious diseases such as COVID-19, droughts and severe heat, on the other hand, fall into the chronic stressor category that are associated with longer-term impacts on human and ecosystem health. Even more persuasive for the use of such a construct, is the ability to approach climate change and sea-level rise as chronic stressors that combine with other acute and chronic events in ways that are yet to be understood and that create additional compounding effects and cascading impacts that we may not have considered.
The importance of adopting such a construct cannot be under-stated as it will redefine and better inform the ways in which we approach all future planning and strategies for achieving the United Nations’ 17 Sustainability Development Goals or SDGs and our own resiliency goals in the U.S. In such a construct, it would no longer be acceptable to undertake major infrastructure projects without consideration of chronic and acute natural hazards that are projected to occur during a pre-defined timeline and their potential impacts. Importantly, such a construct enables holistic consideration of natural hazard events and their cascading impacts including environmental, public health, and ecological consequences. Such a construct also enables a more conducive argument in support of nature-based solutions as part of our toolbox for mitigating natural hazards.
As we reflect on 2021 and continue with our Resilience Series originally launched in 2021, the Hurricane Resilience Research Institute (HuRRI) will address these questions and more. In 2022, the Series places Infrastructure Resilience in the Spotlight, while broadly defining infrastructure as encompassing both built and natural environments and the people within them. As in its first year which placed Texas in the Spotlight, in 2022, we invite you to join the dialogue and help us shape the proposed construct for infrastructure resilience to acute and chronic natural hazards.
Further information about the 2022 Series will be announced in the near future. The Series will follow the Second Part of the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST) Natural Hazards Summit planned for Lubbock, Texas on May 16, 2022.