The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has designated the City of Hoboken, New Jersey as a Role Model City for its flood risk management practices.
These include the use of green infrastructure to retain large amounts of stormwater runoff.
Hoboken is only the second city in the USA (out of 45 worldwide) to achieve such recognition.
Prevention Web reports:
” We are honored to be recognized for our efforts to make Hoboken more resilient,” said Mayor Dawn Zimmer. “Through a multi-layered approach to resiliency, we are on the cusp of solving a more than century-old flooding problem.”…
The City of Hoboken is pursuing a variety of strategies to mitigate flood risk… A comprehensive “Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge” water management strategy that will protect Hoboken, Weehawken and northern Jersey City from flooding have won $230 million of federal funding as part of the Rebuild by Design resiliency competition. The award is expected to fund the implementation of the “Resist” element of the strategy. Through a community process, the City has completed the conceptual design for a boathouse/resiliency center built into a berm along Hoboken Cove that combines flood protection with a community amenity. The City is currently seeking to implement this project as a first phase of the Resist strategy.”
It is a great honor for Hoboken to be counted as such a brilliant example of resiliency planning and much can be learned through observing their efforts. This city certainly has a bright future ahead.
Inframanage.com notes infrastructure asset resiliency is one of the core components of any infrastructure risk management practice.
As Hoboken has demonstrated, the solution to the level of service issues (flooding in this case) can be the deployment of non-asset solutions.
The city of Hoboken has deployed this ‘out of the box’ infrastructure management thinking in award-winning solutions, providing a good example to other municipalities as to what can be achieved.
PHOTO CREDIT: Alejandro Castro via Flickr Creative Commons License
[…] including updated flood maps, broadened flood risk disclosure laws, and increasing investment in flood risk reduction, says Dr. Jesse Gourevitch, a postdoctoral fellow at Environmental Defense Fund and lead author of […]