Transcript – A Systems-Oriented Post-Event Assessment of Community Resilience

This project, titled a Systems-Oriented Post Event Assessment of Community Resilience, undertakes a comprehensive assessment of community resilience and the coastal bend city of Rockport, Texas, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Our research intends to address the knowledge gap regarding the systemic interactions among agents, institutions and infrastructure in the context of disaster response and recovery. Paying explicit attention to feedback among the constituents of community resilience, our hybrid approach combines a post-event review capability framework, collaboration with stakeholders to identify critical system component interactions and assessment of the state of critical infrastructure in the study area. Namely, we carried out initial interviews with Rockport public officials and conducted assessments using mobile LIDAR of open road side channels in a Rockport residential community. The initial interviews revealed chains of influence resulting from interactions among the natural environment, built environment and sociopolitical structure in Rockport following Hurricane Harvey. These chains of influence involve interactions among water, energy and food, such as the cascading effect of flooding and wind on electricity supply, which in turn affects refrigerators’ ability to keep food from spoiling. The interviews further revealed that awareness among residents is currently high. But complacency may go up again following declines in awareness as residents forget the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and as new residents with no experience of the hurricane move to the city. Our findings regarding Rockport’s critical drainage network were analyzed through the development of a heuristic method that was used to calculate six assessment attributes. Of these attributes, two (channel bottom widths and the average length of pipes and culverts) met the design requirements, while four—namely channel depth, the two side slopes and the longitudinal slope of the drainage channels—failed to do so. Thus, while most of the water is conveyed to both ends of the street, some areas possibly accumulate water instead of conveying it to the discharge points. Once complete, our findings will be shared with Rockport public officials.