Texas Proves that US Infrastructure is Not Resilient and is Facing a Crises

“Millions of people across a storm-scared South were bracing for one last night of extreme cold Friday, following a devastating week in which dozens of people died, homes and businesses sustained billions of dollars in damage and basic services such as power and water catastrophically failed.  The reckoning over why – and who is to blame  - was intensifying Friday, even as residents were still coming to grips with the scale of destruction.” – Washington Post February 20th, 2021.

Lack of Resilience Leaves the USA primed for More Catastrophes.

The New York Times article on the cataclysmic Southern Snow storm, on February the 22nd 2021,  hit the nail on the head - regarding the sustainability and resilience of US Infrastructure  - when it had the following heading on its front Page – “Storms Exposing A Nation Primed for Catastrophe.”

Our team at the International Sustainable Resilience Center (ISRC - https://isrc-ppp.org/) is focused on addressing global challenges relating to the sustainability and resilience of infrastructure and we support the sentiments raised by the New York Times.  It seems that unless we depoliticize tangible climate-change impacts on US infrastructure (and if you cannot utter the word climate change  - try using increasingly reoccurrence of adverse weather events) we as a nation are destined to continue experience multi-billion dollar adverse events that will cost more than the remedy.

The US media continue to report on the “snow-mageddon” event that triggered blackouts in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi to name a few states; saw one third of oil production halted; disrupted water supplies; paralyzed vaccination efforts; and even impacted Northern-Mexico when gas exports were cut off.  All these domino failures were caused by the US’s moribund infrastructure, poor leadership infrastructure renewal, and a denial that we are standing on a threshold of repeated catastrophic failures unless we change attitudes toward, and become more serious about building resilient infrastructure.

Resilience Planning Requires Planning for the Worst Case Scenarion

Resilience is not about planning for the best-case scenarios, cutting corners for maintenance and believing that events will this will never happen in my back yard.  It is also not based on risk mitigation strategies (or the lack of them) that were devised in the past and which ignore identified present or identified potential future risks.  

All past administrations (both Republican and Democrat) have spent too little time on identifying and implementing strategies that manage the effects of climate change, have been reluctant to hire people who know anything about resilience, and have been slow to embrace emergency management strategies that have been regularly called for by experts for the last 20+ years.  Last week’s events have exposed how vulnerable our critical infrastructure is to adverse events. It is amazing that not only were these events predictable; they have happened before.  This is true for Texas just over ten years ago, this is true for California (the last few years) and for Gulf States for the last five years with their increasingly serious exposure to hurricanes. We have to ask ourselves what it wrong with national, state, and local government leaders across the countries.  Do they just not get it, or heaven forbit, do they just not care.  

We All are Complicit

Sadly, we should also not forget that we are complicit in the resilience dilemma we refuse to face.  There are two things that we can do.  We can come to terms that taxes are needed to fix our terribly neglected and antiquated infrastructure, and we need to look for leaders who understand the urgency of implementing strategies that focus on building resilient infrastructure. Frankly, we are out of time to quibble and accuse each other of embracing survival paradigms that are “too green” or “too costly” or “too innovative.”  How about thinking pragmatically and moving forward to protect infrastructure that threatens our economic activity and wellbeing.  Remember, a storm does not care whether you are Republican or a Democrat.

The Blame Game

We need to move away from asking who is to blame and ask who is going to fix it? We need to shift towards  more aggressive government regulation and higher upfront costs if we are going to fix critical infrastructure. There needs to be a strong mandate to fix problems and responsible and accountable parties need to be identified.  When the sun starts shining again we need to not fall into an amnesia trap and say, the weather is great again and do we really need to spend money to fix it? Just think about the massive power bills that you are going to receive in the mail in the next few weeks. Who is to blame? Stop blaming someone else, and find people who can fix things now.

Start Focusing on Resilience

Richard Seline co-founder of the Resilience Innovation Hub has had the following to say regarding resilience.

“Increasingly, the focus on "resilience" as a call to action has become a buzzword rather than measure of performance by public and private sector decision-makers. Simply, our version of resilience is defined as pre-disaster risk mitigation and investment, not recovery and rebuilding after the fact, which is precisely what is being debated across traditional and social media.”

This profound statement points out that we also need to start embracing future forward strategies that embrace resilient future proofing of all our infrastructure initiatives. There is much that we can do – we are not powerless.

Emerging Resilience Trends

The World Resources Institute (WRI) on Friday stated that attention needs to be given to modernizing buildings, infrastructure and technology.  This includes updating energy codes and building regulations; designing smart building that can resist adverse events, invest in reliable systems and infrastructure, and mitigating climate change impacts.

If any pragmatic approach is to be adopted that calls for tangible action, rather than calls for reforms that go nowhere, leadership needs to step up.  Promised legislation from leaders that are expressing shock at what has happened is ironic and totally avoidable.  In the Washington Post (February 22nd , 2021) the following was pointed out – “Those serving Texas main power grid – the portion managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) – garnered $40 billion in windfall revenue……Somebody won big. That is not all profit, but I suspect most of it will be.”

This is incredible. Can you imagine how most resilient infrastructure could have been built by the ill gained profits of Texan utility companies during the crises.  There is something deeply wrong and our leaders should never have allowed this to happen.

What is certainly needed is a resilient infrastructure and resilient leaders.  This means we need to understand what resilience planning entails and it also means that we need to do more than adopt the window dressings of resilience.  Hopefully, whatever approach is adopted can be done through long lasting partnerships between the public and private sectors and their leaders which avoid the pitfalls of outright privatization. What we need is a coalition of the willing that seeks partnerships that can build resilient infrastructure.

Resilient People-first PPPs (PfPPPs)

Much can be achieved through People-first Public Private Partnerships (PfPPPs) that call for a people centric approach to partnerships that seek not only value for money out of projects, but also seek value for people and value for the future (a form of future proofing that we need to seriously adopt). Hopefully our leaders can heed the call for an approach that calls for sustainable and resilient best practices.

What Do We Mean by Resilience?

Before we start, we need to understand what resilience entails. Recently I read a book on climate resilience  - “Climate Resilient Urban Area – Governance, design and development in coastal delta cities” edited by Rutger de Graaf-van Dinther (published by Palgrave MacMillan – ISSN 2523-8124) that discusses the concept of “five Pillars of Climate Resilience.” In Chapter One, the following paraphrased observational comments were made on resilience by the authors – 

• “Increasingly, the concepts of resilience and vulnerability are associated with cities’ efforts to respond to, and to prepare for climate change.
• In the last decades, the concept of resilience has been applied in a wide range of disciplines including economics, psychology, social sciences, natural hazards, and engineering.
• The impact of climate change on urban areas has been so sizeable ….. that a proactive transformation has become a necessity.
• Transformative capacity relates to our ability to transform socio-ecological systems trajectories towards ecosystem stewardships.
• The processes of transformative capacity are participatory and co-creative.
• Through identifying and implementing catalyzing interventions, our physical systems can leapfrog  towards a progressive state of resilience.
• These interventions can be scaled up and replicated for progressive resilience impact.” 

Personal observations of the state of PPP implementation during the pandemic and the Texas catastrophe, vis-à-vis the critical need for a resilient infrastructure approach  - using PfPPPs  - should be closely aligned with the observations listed above. They should include the following take-aways - 

• The concepts of resilience and vulnerability should be associated with efforts to respond to better prepare PPPs for adverse events.
• PPP practitioners should be implementing the concepts of resilience and vulnerability to prepare projects for adverse events.  The concept of resilience should be applied as vigorously as it is being applied by other  disciplines (many of which form the foundation stones of PPPs).  The pandemic (and recently forgotten catastrophic adverse natural events) should impress upon ourselves that proactive transformation of PPP practice is a necessity. 
• The impact of adverse natural events on PPPs has been so sizeable (so much so) that a proactive transformational approach has become a necessity.
• Transformative capacity should relate to strategies that embrace sustainability and reliance stewardship.
• Transformation of PPP practice should  be participatory and co-creative.
• Identifying and implementing catalyzing mitigation interventions, can leapfrog PPPs towards a progressive state of resilience
• Interventions should be scaled up and replicated for progressive and cumulative resilience impacts.

PPPs Should adopt the 5 Pillars of Climate Resilience

In their book, De Graaf-van Dinther and Ovink describe the need for “Five Pillars of Climate Resilience,” which I have adapted as “Five Pillars of PPP Resilience for PPP implementation,” especially regarding holistic resilience for project visioning and design, construction, financing, and operations and maintenance.  These pillars should be adopted as we attempt to “proactively and permanently” mitigate the debacle that the US has just faced.

The five-pillar approach includes the following – 

• Threshold Capacity – This should include PPP planners preparing and building thresholds of variation to prevent project structural damage through risk management.  The construction and operation of PPPs  - to maintain threshold capacity - is dependent on environmental resources and social, institutional, technical, and economic activities.  
• Coping Capacity – it is important that capacity to reduce damage from an adverse event that exceeds a damage threshold to PPP projects exists.  This includes effective emergency and mitigation plans, improved communication to create project risk awareness, a clear project organizational structure, and dedicated responsibility for adverse event management.   This cannot occur if there are no early warning system instruments that can preempt surprises. It is also important that project damage reduction is instantaneous and does not lag.  Unfortunately, the pandemic has shown that both the public and private sectors had limited coping capabilities and that responses lagged. This needs to be rectified.
• Recovery Capacity – This refers to the project’s ability to quickly recover to a project state that is the equivalent or better than before the event.  Contractually, this might be difficult in a PPP, but if there is a strong intent to mitigate repetitive event impacts, it is important that this be considered.  Improved recovery is tied to project team ability and knowledge  of past events. 
• Adaptive Capacity – This is related to a project team’s capacity to anticipate the unanticipated threats to projects in the future. Present conditions can and do change constantly change for PPP projects.  It is therefore important that project managers do not focus only of the present contractual terms of reference, but also build adaptive capacity by anticipating uncertainty based on the adoption of precautionary practices. This also means avoiding technical project lockdowns, by being receptive to future new technologies and innovations that can enhance adaptive capacity. Mitigation of technological obsolescence should be a standard adaptive approach to PPP projects – especially in projects that support digital infrastructure.  Additionally,  project insurance terms should be adaptive so that lessons learned in the pandemic can implemented. 
• Transformative Capacity – This relates to the ability of a project management team to transform the way it operates when faced with future expected catastrophic developments.  While adaptation is associated with small step incremental changes, transformation should be focused on transforming the current management approach through proactive and collaborative innovation in the long-term. This includes deliberately harnessing stakeholder’s ideas, building trust, improving willingness to implement new strategies, and enhancing awareness of the systematic management changes being proposed.  This approach will also  allow a wider circle of formal project partners and stakeholders to link proposed transformative changes to their own agendas and thereby increase their willingness to adopt them as their own. This cannot take place in a vacuum and will require resources and systematic tools that are supported by policy and implementation guidelines.  

We need to really rethink resilience or we will continue to be exposed to mega-convergence events that can be avoided.

FEMA’s new PPP Resilience Guide

Fortunately, FEMA’s National Integration Center (NIC) is currently drafting a “Building Private-Public Partnerships Guide.” The guide will provide recommendations and best practices for jurisdictions to establish and maintain a private-public partnership (PPP) to help coordinate mitigation, response and recovery planning and preparedness. The guide will help both public and private sector emergency managers at all levels collaborate to increase community resilience.  In addition, the FEMA guide will help with the following - 

• “Promote why, what and how to build relationships, communicate and share information between private sector and state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) public sector emergency management partners; 
• Engage PPP in resilience-building and response-oriented actions based on community lifelines, supply chains and related economic activity; 
• Build resilience by integrating the private sector into mitigation planning and actions; Involve local businesses in emergency operations planning and response; and Integrate disaster recovery planning with economic development.”

Conclusion

There is a wealth of available tools and resources that can be adopted to introduce resilience to our infrastructure. We (politicians, private sector leaders, and citizens) are standing at a decision crossroad that can proactively resolve the challenges we face, or leave us repetitively vulnerable to adverse events. The choice seems simple.  The desire to act should not be unsurmountable. It will be interesting to see what the pending ASCE’s new “State of US Infrastructure “scorecard looks like when it is released next month.  I am sure that the last score card which gave the U.S. a C score will be worse.  It is time to wake up and stop making excuses.

Note

On Friday the 26th, 2021 the ISRC will be holding a webinar which will discuss the very issues highlighted in this article. You can follow the link provided below to register - https://lnkd.in/gRNNSqe

Presenters will include  -  myself, Richard Selinewho was mentioned earlier in this article andJoel Thomas who is supporting the effort to develop FEMA’s PPP Guidelines.