Africa could be the world's breadbasket if it has enabling policies, a conducive business environment, adequate and resilient infrastructure, innovative technologies, access to capital, and transparency in governance that will help the continent achieve this potential. An article in White …
Study Forms Framework for Road Network Resilience to Guide Investments
Extreme events from climate change will continue to cause disruption and damage to road networks. Despite the vulnerability of our infrastructure networks to natural disasters and climate events, they also play a critical role in boosting our resilience to these impacts. Low-income countries and …
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Investing in Infrastructure Resilience Key to Tackling Climate Hazards
The latest IPCC assessment report, AR6, concludes that temperatures will continue to rise until at least 2050 under all emissions scenarios. Rising temperature means extreme weather events like heavy rainfall, flooding, stronger typhoons and hurricanes, droughts, and heat waves will become more …
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Decaying Power Grids Undermines Expansion of Renewables and EVs in the US
The United States Transmission networks face many challenges – aging, rising outages, and the impacts of severe weather events are becoming more frequent. The Reuters article, "Creaky US power grid threatens progress on renewables, EVs," presents that improving the US electric grid will boost the …
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Transport Infrastructure Resilience and Its Role in Community and Disaster Resilience
In the event of road or bridge closures due to extreme events damages like earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and others, can the transport network still allow access to essential services and amenities to residents affected? When calamity hits a specific area, access to food, hospital or emergency …
Post-fire Resilience Planning for Watersheds
Large-scale wildfires that have ravaged Australia and the USA can cause a lot of water contamination. Contamination is especially true when heavy rains follow the fires, washing contaminants such as ash, toxins, and other metallic sediments into the nearby natural waterways. These contaminants …
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Nepal Road Asset Management Uses Geohazard Risk Assessment
In many developing countries, disasters triggered by climate change like landslides can negatively impact their infrastructure, livelihood, and economy. And because of inadequate resources or low-adaptive capacity, it would take some time for them to bounce back, unlike developed …
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Water Supply Infrastructure Strain Affects African Cities
West African nations such as Ghana, Ivory Coast, and the more Central African Zimbabwe face many issues due to lack of water supply in their major cities. Increasing population growth and unreliable climate change are rendering people helpless as, for the most part, they do not have the financial …
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Applying Infrastructure Asset Management Practice to Shun “Day Zero”
Cape Town, South Africa is facing a very dire situation due to a three-year-long mega-drought. By May, the city was expecting to have to turn off its water supply and hand out a meager 25 liters per day to its citizens, who will have to make their way through long and potentially dangerous crowds …
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The New York Water Tunnel – Building Better Resilient Infrastructure
Last year, New York City brought a long-overdue water project to completion by the activation of a new drinking water tunnel from Brooklyn to Staten Island. The $250 million-tunnel was delayed when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. Ironically, disasters such as Sandy are the very reason that this …
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Calamitous Natural Events and the Infrastructure Resilience Questions
Harvey and Irma were the two tropical cyclones that battered the US coasts in late August 2017. Both storm systems were classified as major hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey with its 130 mph wind was classified as Category 4, while Hurricane Irma was Category 5 with her winds reaching 185 mph. As …
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California Legislation Recognizes Watersheds as Critical Infrastructure
It is no secret that the US State of California has spent the last hundred years creating a vast system and network of pipes, pump stations, and aqueducts that reach far and wide into distant regions in order to filter water from remote rivers into hard to reach dry zones in the Southern part of the …
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