Flood Resiliency ~ Dutch Lessons for World Cities

Rising sea levels generally and ocean storm surges, river floodwaters, and intense rainfalls particularly inspire new kinds of thinking about water management, going beyond higher dikes and barriers towards more defense-in-depth, including flood-friendly construction, making room for the rivers, and building absorbent greener cities. Here are some good surveys of this movement...

A Doctor's Sword ~ Amazing WWII Experience...

I'm looking forward to seeing the full documentary A Doctor's Sword telling Dr Aidan MacCarthy's WWII saga from Dunkirk to Nagasaki, a story full of disaster, compassion, resilience, and amazing luck. Here's the trailer...

Unknown Soldier ~ Portraying Resilience & Pride

NPR's Elizabeth Blair spotlights photographer David Jay's Unknown Soldier series of images of severely injured warriors...

"Jay believes these wounds belong to all of us: "You can imagine how many times each of these men and women have heard a parent tell their child, 'Don't look. Don't stare at him. That's rude.' I take these pictures so that we can look; we can see what we're not supposed to see. And we need to see them because we created them." Jay believes seeing is one step closer to understanding."

Resilience Dividend ~ Boston's Prep, Readiness...

The Guardian excerpts Judith Rodin's The Resilience Dividend: Managing Disruption, Avoiding Disaster and Growing Stronger in an Unpredictable World...

"The city of Boston proved it had developed an exceptional state of readiness for a citywide disruption when, on the afternoon of 15 April, 2013 -- Marathon Monday, as it’s known there -- two improvised explosive devices detonated on Boylston Street. Although the attack was unanticipated and unpredictable, Boston had been getting ready for just such an event for more than a decade -- through network building and streamlining communications to improve awareness, undertaking situational drills and exercises to fine-­tune integration, and finding and adapting best practices from colleagues worldwide to bring in a broad range of ideas and solutions. [...] Being prepared is not a matter of luck [...] It was a matter of carefully and methodically building the char­acteristics of resilience that enable an effective response to crisis. Resilience is not only about responding to shock and stress. It is also about learning and continuing to adapt and grow because of the ex­perience. This process of “revitalisation” can further increase your readiness for sub­sequent disruptions, find opportunities that emerge from what you have learned, affect positive changes, and build even greater resilience (“the resilience dividend”)."

Learning From Sandy ~ Can NYC Really Prepare?

Superstorm Sandy -- two years ago, this past two weeks or so -- exceeded expectations and caught much of NYC and our American eastern seaboard surroundings short. Surge flooding, power loss, transit disruption, property damage, and more. Watch the docus to get a sense of scale and ferocity... The NYC Comptroller has upped estimates of property at-risk and the NYC leadership are on the ball pushing for change. DotEarthling Andrew Revkin spotlights NYC's softer relationship with the sea and especially NYTimes colleague Alan Feuer's Building for the Next Big Storm ~ After Hurricane Sandy, New York Rebuilds for the Future...

"In the next four decades, scholars say, sea levels are expected to rise by as much as 30 inches, and if the worst projections come to pass, about 800,000 city residents could find themselves living with the threat of being swamped. According to an insurance report commissioned by the city, if New York suffers another storm like Sandy in the early 2050s, when ocean levels and the population are likely to be higher, it could cause $90 billion in damage -- almost five times the cost of the initial storm."

Some radical new thinking is needed about coastal flood resilience, defence-in-depth, room for the water, more savvy infrastructure, and more... Especially watch this series of speakers highlighting plans for Recovery and Resiliency at NYC's Hospitals (NYU Langone, Bellevue, etc)... P.S. Here's some historical nuggets, including my commentary on 27 Oct 2012 Superstorm Sandy ~ Tracking Emergent Weather, 28 Oct NYC Evac Map ~ Warning Zones for Sandy, looking at big picture on 29 Oct Imaging Sandy ~ NASA/NOAA Timelapse, the disaster retrospective Into the Storm ~ Final Days of Tallship Bounty, NYC Mayor Bloomberg announcing PlaNYC, early thoughts on resiliency, the power of drills in the hospital evacuations, and specific inventions, like the Tunnel Plug!

Survivor Tree ~ Resilience, Survival, Rebirth...

The Survivor Tree thrives beyond near-death and destruction...

"A callery pear tree became known as the "Survivor Tree" after enduring the September 11, 2001 terror attacks at the World Trade Center. In October 2001, the tree was discovered at Ground Zero severely damaged, with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. The tree was removed from the rubble and placed in the care of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. After its recovery and rehabilitation, the tree was returned to the Memorial in 2010. New, smooth limbs extended from the gnarled stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present. Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival and rebirth."

Kuriositas spots The 9/11 Survivor Tree’s Story Voiced by Whoopi Goldberg: A True Metaphor for the Human Spirit...

"This beautiful animation, with the tree given voice by Whoopi Goldberg, forms the centerpiece of a campaign to encourage people to visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum outside of which the tree stands proud and tall, welcoming visitors. Survivor Tree was animated by Elastic, through the BBDO Agency. As a metaphor for the human spirit and testament to the healing power of caring, it takes some beating."

Disaster City Revisit ~ BBC Spots Training Hub

The BBC spotlights Disaster City which we've previously seen is an emergency worker learning lab...

"... the most comprehensive emergency response training facility in the world. At the 52 acre site, Saima Mohsin learns how full-scale reconstructions of collapsed buildings are used to simulate a wide variety of disaster scenarios, from explosions to train crashes and earthquakes. The findings are then usedto equip emergency personnel from across the world with the knowledge and technology to respond effectively in the most challenging situations."

"Like" Flying Paper ~ Vote for ArcLight Filmfest!

MIT alumnus filmmaker Nitin Sawhney writes the exciting news re: his Flying Paper documentary about resilient kids crafting kites...

"We have a unique opportunity to get Flying Paper into the ArcLight Documentary Festival in Hollywood as a "Fan Favorite," but we need your help by going to this link on YouTube and LIKING it. Only 5 films competing will win a spot in the festival as a "Fan Favorite" so our participation in this film festival is completely in your hands. Please go to YouTube and "Like" the link and share it with your friends and encourage them to do likewise."

Absolutely! Click thru to YouTube to vote...

Ready Rx ~ Atul Gawande on Boston Hospitals...

Dr Atul Gawande shares in the New Yorker a bit about how and Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready...

"The bombs at the Boston Marathon were designed to maim and kill, and they did. Three people died within the first moments of the blast. More than a hundred and seventy people were injured. [...] Yet it now appears that every one of the wounded alive when rescuers reached them will survive. [...] The explosions took place at 2:50 P.M., twelve seconds apart. Medical personnel manning the runners’ first-aid tent swiftly converted it into a mass-casualty triage unit. Emergency medical teams mobilized en masse from around the city, resuscitated the injured, and somehow dispersed them to eight different hospitals in minutes, despite chaos and snarled traffic. [Indeed,] everything happened too fast for any ritualized plan to accommodate. [Nevertheless] nurses, doctors, X-ray staff, transport staff, you name it showed up as soon as they heard the news. They wanted to help, and they knew how. As one colleague put it, they did on a large scale what they knew how to do on a small scale. [...] Talking to people about that day, I was struck by how ready and almost rehearsed they were for this event. A decade earlier, nothing approaching their level of collaboration and efficiency would have occurred. We have, as one colleague put it to me, replaced our pre-9/11 naïveté with post-9/11 sobriety."

Read the whole piece for rich details about resiliency, preparedness, and grim efficiency of Boston's hospitals & people. P.S. BostInno's Lauren Landry summarizes activity from many of the hospitals. And Tim Murphy writes in Mother Jones How Bombs in Iraq Saved Lives in Boston.

Boomtown Slum ~ Economist on Kibera Daily LIfe

The Economist xmas double-issue spotlights upwardly mobile Africa in Boomtown slum ~ A day in the economic life of Africa’s biggest shanty-town...

"Africa’s biggest slum, it is home to perhaps a million people. Nobody knows for sure, since Kibera is left to its own devices. Government is absent: it offers the residents (regarded as squatters) no services, opens no schools, operates no hospitals, paves no roads, connects no power lines and pumps no water into homes. And yet Kibera, wedged in between ornate embassies and a well-tended golf course, is an integral part of Nairobi [...] Kibera’s origins are Western. A century ago British colonial rulers gave small plots of land on the edge of Nairobi to Nubian soldiers serving in the King’s African Rifles. They built mud huts [...] The land was later nationalised but the Nubians stayed put and rented parts of it to newcomers. Today most homes are made of ragged tin and reused timber. [...] Kibera is a thriving economic machine. Local residents provide most of the goods and services. Tailors are hunched over pedal-powered sewing machines. Accountants and lawyers share trestle tables in open-air offices. Carpenters carve frames for double beds along a railway line. Whole skinned cows hang in spotless butcher shops. [...] Life in Kibera can be harsh. Disease is rife, food is short for some, and death can come suddenly. [...] The key to making it in Kibera is access to capital. A market of one million potential customers crowds in on entrepreneurs, but raising the money to start a business is hard. Most banks won’t lend to them because they have no collateral, perhaps not even a fixed address. Those who manage to borrow face high interest rates. [...] Kibera may be the most entrepreneurial place on the planet. Residents have no choice but to look after themselves."

Inspiring resilience. And yet further evidence that we need more inclusive innovations and beneficial slum solutions.

Boatlift ~ Resilient Maritime Response to 9/11...

9/11 is yet to be adequately avenged and the cultural cancers that enabled it are yet to be fully exorcised from Earth, but there are positive lessons to be learned from the civil service and civilian emergency reaction, including the resilient maritime response documented here in Boatlift...

Protecting NYC ~ Engineering For Resiliency...

Alan Feuer in NYTimes writes Protecting the City, Before Next Time...

"What is the way forward? Does the city continue to build ever-sturdier and ever-higher sea walls? Or does it accept the uncomfortable idea that parts of New York will occasionally flood and that the smarter method is to make the local infrastructure more elastic and better able to recover? [...] some experts in the field who have thought deeply about how to protect New York from huge storms like Hurricane Sandy -- and especially from the coastal surges they produce -- suggested that less intrusive forms of so-called soft infrastructure might prove more effective in sheltering the city than mammoth Venetian sea walls. [...] According to the experts -- architects, environmentalists and civil engineers -- large-scale projects like underwater gates are expensive, cumbersome and difficult to build. More important, they say, such undertakings are binary projects that work just fine until the moment they do not."

See the article for three fairly bold proposals.  And see Reuters infographic...

Disaster Resilience ~ Qantas A380 Engine Blown

Fascinating documentaries on Qantas A380 engine catastrophe... And here's more about the Airbus A380 aeroplane...

Acid Victims ~ Vile & Inhuman Attacks Epidemic?

The DailyMail shocks/spots Victims of Colombian acid attacks...

"Doused in a searing chemical; disabled and scarred for life; struck by a depression which can make it hard to go on -- the plight of Colombia's acid attack victims is truly heartbreaking. And the number of these horrific assaults is on the rise. At least 250 Colombian women have been disfigured in the last three years, with this year’s victim reports already outpacing 2011’s. [...] many are believed victimized by former lovers or some [...] for their looks. [...] 51-year-old Consuelo Cordoba was attacked by her boyfriend 11 years ago -- requiring her to wear a mask to prevent infection and a tube to breathe out of her nose [...] Today she walks a market in Bogota begging for change after, like many acid victims, being unable to find work for herself due to her appearance. 'I've thought about committing suicide, yes sir, I've thought about taking my life three times. I say to myself, why live? With a life like the one I have, what for?'"

Wow. I'm beside myself with both disgust at the subhumans who do this and wanting to embrace these women and convey strength and salute their resilience. Employers, please hire them. Doctors, treat. Everyday citizens, acknowledge their humanity. And politicians -- get your shit together and really criminalize these despicable acts.

NYTimes Diagnosis ~ Appreciating MD Thinking!

Dr Lisa Sanders latest Diagnosis case Hurt All Over in the NYTimes is an epic illustration of MD thinking -- and why both this column is important and more generally why Doctors earn their pay!

"‘Will you please see my sister?’ the young woman asked Dr. David Podell, who was a friend of a friend and had a reputation as a kinder version of TV’s Dr. Gregory House. People told her that Podell was a doctor who specialized in diagnosing odd diseases, and she hoped he might finally solve the puzzle of her older sister’s mysterious illness. [After an involved pathway, the Dr diagnosed Celiac Disease -- a Gluten-sensitivity] “I was very enthusiastic about this diagnosis. And I thought she really had it. So maybe it was the nonscientific component -- the salesmanship -- that made her try and stay with it.” This case is a reminder of an important precept in medicine: a diagnosis isn’t really final until it is embraced by both the patient and the doctor. That’s the real art of diagnosis and an essential part of the cure."

This is one of the weekly diagnostic mysteries unsleuthed by this fantastic NYTimes series!

Tsunami Sakura ~ Walker on Japanese Resilience

Just saw Lucy Walker speak in the MIT ACT Zones of Emergency series about her documentary film-making experiences, including seeing snippets Devil's Playground, Waste Land, and fully half of Tsunami Sakura -- The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom...

"Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan's recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan's most beloved flower."

Saving Valentina ~ Great Whale + Human Tale!

HuffPost's Laura Hibbard spots this great whale of a tale!

Safecast ~ Opensource Radiation Measures...

Great to see Safecast, an opensource distributed radiation measurement and mapping system. Civic media response to fear, uncertainty, and doubt of government veracity and industry objectivity...

"The ongoing crisis in Japan has highlighted our collective need for trusted information. This site is not meant as a replacement for government or nuclear agencies. Our hope is that data sets from various places can provide additional context to the official statements in these rapidly changing events."

Resilient Power ~ MIT's Off-grid but Electrified;-)

A wee thunderstorm rolled thru Cambridge an hour ago and knocked out electrical power in a major southwestern part of the city bracketing Mass Ave. The Miracle of Science among other provisioneers to the gods had to close down, unable to deal with lack of grid juice. How borderline barbaric! Thousands of US$ lost in both direct and opportunity costs! Very "Third World" -- only it's right here in the USA! Didn't Franklin invent lightning rods two and a half centuries ago?! Yay, go NStar, the incompetent local monopoly electricity "service provider." Except, however, at MIT which is largely off-grid with our own 20MW gas turbine cogeneration plant continuing to deliver the dynamics! We've got resilient power -- i.e. it actually still works -- and I'm now at MIT überbar, the Muddy Charles Pub sampling a cool and rather tasty Sierra Nevada;-)

Palestinian Transition ~ Morally Savvy Strategies

Since the state of Israel was unilaterally declared in 1948, the many displaced Palestinian refugees and those who became partial-citizen Israeli-Arabs have marked Nakba Day today, on May 15, to commemorate the Catastrophe of their expulsion and occupation. But as Karin Laub of the Associated Press notes in Palestinians test tactic of unarmed mass marches, this year we are witnessing the growing Palestinian Transition away from terrorism, suicide bombings, and armed resistance towards unarmed mass demonstrations and peaceful protests (e.g. as documented in Budrus) plus clear articulations of the moral case for fully equal, secular, democratic human rights -- and also crucially -- accelerating entrepreneurial economic development (e.g. as evidenced by Rawabi)...

"Palestinian activists are calling it a preview of new tactics to pressure Israel and win world support for statehood: Masses of marchers, galvanized by the Arab Spring and brought together by Facebook, descending on borders and military posts -- and daring Israeli soldiers to shoot. [...] Israeli officials openly puzzled over how to handle an unfamiliar new phase. "The Palestinians' transition from terrorism and suicide bombings to deliberately unarmed mass demonstrations is a transition that will present us with difficult challenges," said Defense Minister Ehud Barak."

This Palestinian pincer strategy of non-violent moral rightness combined with pro-growth prosperity policies will force Israelis to finally actually share the land and riches of Canaan instead of continuing their racist "Jewish majority", ethnic cleansing, and law of return practices, repeated gross violations of international law and multiple UN resolutions, outright criminal behavior including land seizures as well as raw material and water theft, and irrational Apartheid-like policies, including illegal settlements, concentration camps, and barrier walls, all of which are morally reprehensible, politically indefensible, and culturally barbaric. There's room for many creative solutions here, whether this is a separate two-state future with strong freedoms of cross-border movement, or a federalized bi-national state with strong local rule, or even a one state solution -- or perhaps a blend of these over time with trust-building and peace-keeping measures phased over many years. Or maybe now's the time to be thinking about post-nationalist solutions which instead empower individuals instead of ethnic or tribal collectives. P.S. As added context, please see Palestine's Hidden History of Nonviolence by Yousef Munayyer in Foreign Policy...

"You wouldn't know it from the media coverage, but peaceful protests are nothing new for Palestinians. But if they are to succeed this time, the West needs to start paying attention."