Effective Practices in Flood Adaptation by Recognizing System, Organization, and Project Interdependencies

Abstract

Flooding is a historical and intensifying challenge to transportation infrastructure and system performance and the interconnected systems it supports. Resilience programs attempt to meet the challenges flooding poses by adapting the infrastructure to withstand environmental pressures and preserve function during and after disasters. Current adaptation practices, however, often take the form of hard protective measures, implemented exclusively on transportation assets with little coordination between organizations. As a result, projects can be overly expensive, offer incomplete protection, and result in catastrophic failures across multiple infrastructure systems, such as in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. To build adaptive capabilities effectively, this study recognized the interdependencies among multiple infrastructure systems at the system-, organizational-, and project levels of planning. At the system level, adaptations addressing hazard-based threats to infrastructure systems—such as stormwater and transportation—strengthened infrastructure against cascading failures and improve efficiency in adapting interdependent infrastructure networks. At an organization level, teams that self-reorganized to fit project needs were found to respond more effectively to change and overcame difficulties in implementing adaptations. At a project level, anticipating and addressing causal relationships between the environment and infrastructure were found to improve the reliability of adaptations against catastrophic failure. The effective practices presented came from Malaysia, Sweden, Poland, and other countries around the world. Implementation of these complementary practices, together with asset-based adaptations as needed, can build adaptive capabilities by addressing the interdependencies between infrastructure planning at multiple levels.