21st Century Opportunities, Hazards, Roles, and Responsibilities Facing the Nation’s Water Resources
Publication: Ports 2022
ABSTRACT
Communities around the world have historically formed around access to water for drinking, agriculture, and transportation. Societal and individual project decisions affecting water are continually made, with significant decisions made generations ago continuing to influence current conditions just as current infrastructure investments will influence future generations. Conditions are not static, however. Land use changes, population migration, shifting cultural norms, increased effects of climate change, and the interdependency of supply chains all affect the sufficiency and resilience of water infrastructure. An appropriate balance of needs during planning, design, and recapitalization is both extremely important and difficult. All levels of government, stakeholder communities, and private citizens have roles and responsibilities which sometimes converge but often compete. Acceptable “resilient enough” performance levels vary widely based on who owns the risk of failure and their experience with past disasters. There is a need for resilience and sustainability expectations, particularly in and around natural water resources, to be baselined, shared, taught, and codified to support both technical designers, political decision-makers, and the electorate.
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Ports 2022
Pages: 546 - 556
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Published online: Sep 15, 2022
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