Event Summary
Speakers
- David Lopez Oliver, INES
- Jodie Dublin-Dangleben, Engineer, Department of Public Works and Ports, Dominica
- Yohannes Kesete, World Bank
Description
Agencies that manage physical assets such as transportation, water, or energy face various types of risks, including risk from climatic hazards. In the past few years the frequency and intensity of natural hazards have notably increased. In Summer 2017, hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the Caribbean islands with significant impacts and damages. Hurricane Maria in particular caused devastating damages to Dominica’s housing sector and to the country’s transportation infrastructure. In Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria left more than 80% of the island without power for months after the hurricane.While governments and agencies have realized the importance of incorporating infrastructure risk into decision making, it is often difficult to develop a practical and operational framework to integrate climatic risk into maintenance and management strategies.
The objective of this session is to showcase the application of a GIS-based tool that takes hazard risk and vulnerability measures into account and uses optimization models to determine optimal mitigation activities to increase infrastructure resiliency. The tool is a multi-criteria decision making system that considers various objectives and constraints including budgetary limitations. Using Dominica as a case study, we will show how the outputs of the asset management system can help make decisions that can increase infrastructure resiliency.