NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
DELTA RESIN INITIATIVE:
UPDATE AND PROVISIONAL FINDINGS
EMERY ROE, SENIOR RESIN RESEARCHER
CENTER FOR CATASTROPHIC RISK MANAGEMENT
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
RESIN
Resilient and Sustainable
Infrastructure Networks
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THE AIM OF RESIN IS…
To create, validate, & apply improved
Risk Assessment & Management (RAM)
approaches for the high reliability
management of resilient & sustainable
interconnected critical infrastructure
systems (ICIS).
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PRIMARY RESIN OUTCOMES INCLUDE . . .
• A handbook of practice for ICIS
RAM
• An interdisciplinary curriculum
for a new RAM-Based field of
Inter-Infrastructural Engineering
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Interdisciplinary research
 highlights
differing orientations to risk,
resilience & system definitions for sustainability
 requires
thinking through risk management at
different scales in highly engineered, highly
reliable systems before, during & after a disaster
social science,
30.4%
engineering,
30.4%
20 researchers
5 disciplines
environmental
science, 4.3%
law, 13.0%
city and regional
planning, 21.7%
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DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
High Reliability Management
is the provision of what society considers to be critical
services safely & continuously, even during peak
demand or turbulent times.
As such, you often find HRM in critical infrastructure
systems, i.e., those with control rooms for large-scale
electricity & water systems, among others.
For the purpose of the RESIN initiative, ecosystem
services are critical services and thus require HRM .
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
What Are Ecosystem Functions & Services?
There are many ecosystem functions: regulating atmospheric
chemical composition, temperatures, and precipitation;
decomposing organic matter & producing biomass; maintaining
balances in carbon dioxide and nitrogen; permitting recovery from
natural disturbances; and cycling nutrients, among others.
These functions yield benefits––termed ecosystem services––
including commodities (timber, fish, wildlife), specific services
(hydropower, biological control, bioremediation), intangibles
(preservation of open landscapes, endangered species,
“wilderness”), and amenities (places for recreation)
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
Provisional Findings:
1.
Resilience & sustainability at the ICIS level may well
include a different kind or resilience and
sustainability than most of us think we know.
This is a resilience where infrastructure managers are able to bounce back
from a unpredictable shock or surprise while planning the next step
ahead within the ICIS.
This is a sustainability where these managers are able to increase their
options to respond to unpredictable shocks or surprises at the ICIS level.
And why are surprises inevitable? Because the chief feature of
interconnectivity is surprise and Delta ecosystems—aquatic,
agricultural and urban—are exceedingly complex.
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
The State of Bay-Delta Science 2008 (Healey et
al 2008) has as one of its major conclusions:
“The Delta is a continually changing ecosystem,”
adding: “From a scientific perspective,
changing background conditions means that
our measurements of the Bay-Delta system will
never converge toward any ‘normal’ values”.
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
Provisional Findings (continued):
2. RAM must be interactive and involve control
room operators and emergency responders across
the interconnected critical infrastructures.
How?
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
Some Possible Answers:
--undertake more inter-agency and interinfrastructure simulations, e.g., the CALFED
real-time gaming exercises
--develop real-time indicators of jointly moving
control variables for real-time use in the control
rooms of multiple infrastructures
--and…..
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
…systematically search for better practices being
developed outside California for managing
ICISs, including but not limited to:
--bringing ecologists and environmental scientists
into the control room as real-time dispatchers
and support staff.
DELTA SCIENCE PROGRAM BROWN BAG, MARCH 16 2011
BUT WHAT ABOUT ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT?
ANSWER: Sadly, the gap between promise &
reality of adaptive management could be large:
THANK YOU!
HTTP://CCRM.BERKELEY.EDU/RESIN/
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