Designing Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) to Build Resilience to Extreme Weather-Related Events in Urban Environments

Abstract:

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges to global sustainability, with extreme events being the most immediate way that people experience this phenomenon. Urban areas are particularly vulnerable to weather-related extreme events given their location, concentration of people, and interdependent infrastructure. We present a conceptual framework for urban social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) that integrates three domains: social/equity, environmental, and engineering/technology issues. Extreme events like coastal and urban flooding in many cities expose the impacts of and vulnerability to extreme events that demand a new approach. Examples from superstorm Sandy in New York, coastal flooding in Miami, and urban flooding in many other cities show how socioecological systems and socially sensitive engineering approaches that fail to incorporate the third dimension may reduce resilience to climate-related disaster.

Green infrastructure is often touted as a solution to urban flooding challenges that can increase resilience. We identify solutions across a spectrum of gray to green, including hybrid infrastructure, that vary in their economical feasibility, effectiveness for the targeted service, distributive justice of benefits provided, and multifunctionality, and introduce a tool to assess their resilience. The infrastructure of the future must leverage ecosystem services, improve social well being, and exploit new technologies in ways that benefit all segments of urban populations and are appropriate to the particular urban contexts. These contexts are defined not only by the biophysical environment but also by culture and institutions of each place. The SETS conceptual framework is being applied in ten diverse western hemisphere cities to co-develop, with city practitioners, visions of resilient SETS infrastructure for an uncertain future.