Event Summary
Organization: INES Ingenieros Consultores, University of Leeds, University of Michigan and World Bank
Description
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 11:30am – 1:00pm
Room: La Capilla
This past September, the Caribbean region was severely damaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Despite significant disaster risk reduction and mitigation measures already undertaken in the islands, many people have lost their lives and the islands suffered significant damage to housing, agriculture, forestry, and critical infrastructure. Rebuilding and recovery will take years. An important lesson of the last decades is quick fixes recreate vulnerabilities and put countries on a continued path to devastation from next potential disasters. Instead, it is imperative to integrate resilience and risk-information in the rebuilding process to create an environment that is less susceptible to negative impacts of future events. While governments have realized the importance of incorporating infrastructure risk into decision making, it is often difficult to develop a practical and operational framework.
This side event aims to bring professionals from various disciplines together who have supported several initiatives aimed at informing resilient recovery and reconstruction efforts in the Caribbean. The event will show case the use simple technologies, drones, and modeling to develop a practical and operational approach to integrating natural hazard risks and climate change into infrastructure management. The event will also bring together people who have responded to recent and previous recovery and reconstruction efforts in the Caribbean to share current progress and challenges. The discussants will further share best practices on how to design and implement recovery holistically to enhance future resilience.