Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Complex Enghineering Problem Hazard and Disaster Management: Submitted by
Complex Enghineering Problem Hazard and Disaster Management: Submitted by
SUBMITTED BY
SHAHZAIB BCEF15E025
M. USAMA HAIDER BCEF16E036
NAEEM ALTAF BCEF16M003
M. HUSNAIN BCEF16M001
AUN ABBAS BCEF16E037
ZESHAN ALI BCEF16M019
SUBMITTED TO
LECTURER
Environmental Sustainability
Ecological integrity is maintained, all of earth’s environmental systems are kept in balance
while natural resources within them are consumed by humans at a rate where they are able to
replenish themselves.
Economic Sustainability
Human communities across the globe are able to maintain their independence and have
access to the resources that they require, financial and other, to meet their needs. Economic
systems are intact and activities are available to everyone, such as secure sources of
livelihood.
Social Sustainability
Universal human rights and basic necessities are attainable by all people, who have access to
enough resources in order to keep their families and communities healthy and secure. Healthy
communities have just leaders who ensure personal, labour and cultural rights are respected
and all people are protected from discrimination.
Principles of Sustainability
The following six principles are critical in sustainable community development:
1. Maintaining or enhancing the residents’ quality of life;
2. Enhancing local economic vitality;
3. Ensuring social and intergenerational equality;
4. Maintaining or enhancing environmental quality;
5. Incorporating disaster resilience and mitigation; and
6. Using a consensus-building participatory process when making decisions.
The aim of this paper is to develop insight into the decision-making processes associated with
reconstruction of horizontal infrastructure networks (focusing on wastewater, water supply,
storm water and roads). The argument is based on an initial investigation in an ongoing study
into the reconstruction of Christchurch, New Zealand. The research follows an inductive
approach where theory is developed from a mixture of literature, observations and experience
(Hunter and Kelly, 2008). Approximately 60 semi-qualitative interviews with engineers and
executives involved in the reconstruction have been conducted over 2013/14. Information has
also been gathered through a review of government and academic reports, infrastructure
design guidance and project-specific design reports. Full interview analysis is not yet
completed, however sufficient progress has been made to indicate early insights. Quotes used
in this paper are anonymous, but context is provided through the interviewee role. Roles are
categorized into: leadership (executive), leadership (design), designer and ‘other’ (this
includes finance, planning and environment).
Overall, sustainable development is likely to increase the capacity of people to offset risks
and to facilitate harmony among environment, economy, and society in a disaster-affected
community. Researchers have constantly advocated sustainable community development in
disaster recovery. However, many barriers still exist to post-disaster sustainable community
development. Additional efforts should be invested to develop a better understanding of the
successful application of sustainable community development in disaster recovery. In the
next section, we will apply the six principles of sustainable community development to
examine the recovery of the Christchurch earthquake.
Reconstruction in Christchurch
Context
Christchurch is the main urban center in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, with a
population of approximately 370,000. The city experienced a series of major earthquakes
from 2010 to 2011, with the most damaging earthquake occurring in February 2011. The
estimated cost of recovery is $NZ 40 billion (approximately £20 billion) (New Zealand
Treasury 2013). This is almost 20% of New Zealand’s annual gross domestic product (GDP)
- a substantial impact on the national economy.
Christchurch provides a developed country reconstruction scenario where established
infrastructure networks sustained significant damage (see Figure 1 for a visual indication of
the damage). Table 1 outlines Christchurch’s network characteristics and estimated damage.
The estimated cost of repairing wastewater, water supply, storm water and road networks
within the Christchurch City Council (hereafter: Council) boundaries, (i.e. excluding damage
in neighboring rural districts) is $NZ 2.5 billion.
Integrated Sustainability
Key Factors
Decision boundaries
Amongst the key decisions that need to be made in the early phase of recovery is the design
of institutional mechanisms for managing the recovery (Global Facility for Disaster Risk
Reduction and Recovery - GFDRR 2011). New institutions may be set up or the capacity of
existing institutions may be enhanced to manage the increased workload, or some form of
hybrid model of the two may be used (GFDRR 2011). Each approach creates organizational
boundaries and requires a different distribution of roles and responsibilities, which ultimately
impacts on how decisions are made.
The approach in Christchurch could be described as a hybrid model. The Canterbury
Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) was created under legislation as the overarching
lead recovery agency covering the wider region. It is one of the three clients of the Stronger
Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT). SCIRT’s role forms key element within a
wider construction process for the city; it is implementing the repair of the publically owned
and operated networks in Christchurch (these networks are described in Table 1). SCIRT was
created to facilitate an expedited rebuild, where the extent of damage was considered to be
beyond Council’s management capacity. Council and the New Zealand Transport Agency
(NZTA) are the asset owners and are also clients of SCIRT. SCIRT was created under an
alliance agreement (formalized in September 2011). The contract arrangement is distinctive,
involving three client organizations and five major contracting organizations (forming five
separate construction/delivery teams). Designers from 20 consultancies work within four
design teams based in one office. SCIRT was set up with a limited operational lifetime and its
work is due for completion in 2016. The alliance agreement sets boundaries for SCIRT’s
scope of work. The basis of the agreement is to restore services to Christchurch City, with the
primary objective: “To return the infrastructure networks to a condition that meets the levels
of service prior to the 4 September 2010 earthquake within the timing constraints of the
rebuild.” (Council, NZTA and CERA 2013: 3).
Examining the rebuild of the storm water network provides insight into the challenges of
addressing long-term environmental and social issues. SCIRT’s remit is to repair the ‘hard-
engineered’ assets such as pipes and sumps. It excludes responsibility for damage to the open
waterway network and the levees along the lower reach of the Avon River. This limits
SCIRT’s responsibilities and ability to address problems. As one leader in design
commented: “as engineers they [the team] want to go out and resolve the solution” but it may
be that “SCIRT’s requirement [that is, SCIRT’s remit to resolve the solution] is nothing - the
changes are nothing to do with damaged infrastructure, its damaged land.”
Flood risk was exacerbated in some areas due to earthquake-induced land settlement.
Resolving changes in flood risk in Christchurch is influenced by a complex mix of factors
including physical options to remediate, level of protection required, funding, insurance,
district planning, legislative requirements and personal circumstances of property owners
(Gillooly 2014). The vulnerability of some areas was recently highlighted in both March and
April 2014, when rain resulted in repeated flooding of some private properties. It is not under
SCIRT’s remit to systematically address and provide holistic solutions for flood issues in
Christchurch. Council has retained ownership of developing solutions for these issues. This
was a governance choice that was made early in the recovery. It was not the only option, but
one that was chosen for political and economic reasons. The result is an organizational
boundary in the recovery that has ramifications around the coordination of solutions across
different agencies. One leader in design commented: “The difficulty has been SCIRT works
at a different pace to council and other organizations through the necessity of our
programmer and because of that it has been quite difficult to navigate through that process.”
The organizational boundaries potentially impact the timing and nature of the technical
solutions; however, it is too early in the process to determine the impacts for Christchurch.
Organizational boundaries are a prominent factor in shaping decision making. These
boundaries have an influence on the nature of remaining three factors and will thus continue
to arise in discussion as these factors are addressed.
Trade-offs
The United Nations Development Programme and the International Recovery Platform
(c2010) identify that one of the major challenges of infrastructure reconstruction is balancing
the costs of alternative strategies to reinstate infrastructure services with long-term
development benefits. The tension between speed of recovery and deliberation on how to
make improvements is ubiquitous to the reconstruction process (Olshansky and Chang 2009).
As described above, the longer-term requirements around flood-risk management are not
being delivered within the recovery work coordinated by SCIRT. This is causing some delay
in SCIRT work. Uncertainty over design arrangements for levees on the Avon River (which
is under consideration by Council) impacts on SCIRT reconstruction options for roads
adjacent to the levees. Thus, the nature of institutional boundaries is inherently linked to the
trade-offs over timing. At the time of writing, this delay is posing a potential risk to the
overall programme but is not yet having a material impact.
The pressure to restore services as quickly as possible limits the ability to consider wholesale
changes to infrastructure networks (or vice versa). In discussing the strategic planning for a
project, an executive commented, “it is all about time and balancing a rapid response with an
appropriate response.” One designer remarked that their ability to explore possible solutions
was limited due to the short-term pressure to restore services: “because of the operational
issues… we needed a solution quick and we’ve got to get started.” Also, SCIRT’s work is
predicated on a basis of restoring a system ‘like for like’ using modern equivalent materials.
This limits scope of possible change from the outset of the reconstruction programme. Efforts
are made to integrate improvements such as increasing pipe capacity or rebuilding a pump
station in a less vulnerable location. However, improvements such as increasing capacity may
require seeking funds beyond that approved for SCIRT work. Availability of extra funding is
limited given the significant base-cost of the rebuild.
Limitation in scope is also attributable to the level of damage sustained, where the extent of
damage impacts on the opportunity to consider wholesale change. Network damage in some
areas of Christchurch justified a complete rebuild of a section of the wastewater network, but
assets in other areas of the city remained in a reasonable or repairable condition. Hallegatte
and Dumas (2009) refer to this as ‘technological inheritance’, which constrains the ability to
integrate modern technologies and standards during reconstruction. Despite extensive damage
to infrastructure, or the communities it supports, destruction is rarely complete and repair is
often lower in up-front cost than replacement. As can be seen in Figure 1 and Table 1, despite
extensive damage in some areas in Christchurch, most of the infrastructure remains
operational.
Environmental initiatives
Reviewing environmental-based initiatives moves into the realm of what may be viewed as
the grassroots of sustainability thinking. For infrastructure, the essence of the ‘environmental’
theme of sustainability assessment is about understanding the overall impact of resource use
in a project, reducing material use, eliminating waste and general environmental impact. This
is manifested in various practices such as: reducing runoff, using recycled or recyclable
materials and management of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. For SCIRT, waste
minimization is identified as the core element of their “sustainability culture” (SCIRT, n.d.
a), thus it is worth specifically addressing. Low-carbon design and operational carbon
assessment is a related factor but it will not be addressed in detail here given limited space.
Suffice to say, it is not an explicit aspect of SCIRT’s approach, although efforts towards
reducing waste and lifecycle assessment in design (both described later) may be associated
with low-carbon design.
Recycling of material appeared to be a potential opportunity for the reconstruction of roads in
Christchurch given the repetitive nature and scale of work across the city. For example, in
terms of infrastructure networks, roads directly damaged by earthquakes needed either
resurfacing or a full-depth rebuild. Marginally damaged roads may also be trenched to access
and fix damaged pipes that lie underneath. These efforts can result in a significant waste
stream of discarded pavement and sub-base material.
However, this opportunity is constrained by a number of factors. Recycling material in-situ is
being implemented in some cases for pavement rehabilitation. Yet the quality of in-situ road
base can be highly variable, even within a street. Therefore, specifying re-use of this material
poses a risk to the quality and durability of the construction work. As one leader in design
expressed: “We would like to use a lot of the materials that we are digging out, for reuse –
but again it comes down to cost... No matter what people talk about, cost is the driver”. Also,
a particular factor for Christchurch is that there is an abundant supply of locally sourced, low-
cost, high-quality aggregate for the road base and for backfilling trenches. This significantly
reduces the incentive to recycle material, as it cannot be justified economically. This is
critical when funds are highly constrained; funds not invested roads could be allocated to
other aspects of the reconstruction. The availability of cheap aggregate also reduces the
viability of investigating other innovative alternatives. One interviewee concerned with
environmental management mentioned a potential initiative around recycling cement kiln
dust. This involved using cement kiln dust in trench backfilling. However the idea did not
gain traction due to cost and uncertainty over performance of the material in the ground.
Waste minimization is a performance target for delivery teams at SCIRT and is perhaps the
most visible environmental initiative beyond compliance with environmental consent
requirements. There are incentives in place to promote more sustainable practice; efforts
towards waste minimization impacts on delivery team performance rating. This rating has
commercial ramifications as it influences the percentage of work allocated across the five
contracting organizations. While SCIRT is an alliance organization, this incentive (amongst
others) has been set up to maintain an element of competition between the delivery teams and
to support improvement in performance throughout the five-year contract.
It is worth taking a moment to look at sustainability assessment of infrastructure in a
business-as-usual context. Sustainability rating schemes for civil infrastructure (current
schemes are CEEQUAL in the United Kingdom, Envision in the United States and the
Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia’s IS Scheme) specify goals for recycling
materials, diverting waste from landfill, and maximizing use of local materials. This is often
done through stating percentage by volume of project materials that that should reused or
recycled to meet certain performance criteria. To an extent, these tools may provide some
guidance around potential issues to address in reconstruction, but the same priorities and
possibilities do not necessarily apply in a post-disaster scenario. Determining ‘best practice’
performance that could be consistently applied to different recoveries is perhaps not even
feasible given that every disaster is different. The challenge around developing a waste
minimization scheme for SCIRT’s work is discussed below.
It took approximately two years to develop a waste-stream reporting framework across the
five delivery teams (who also manage sub-contractors). The process started with developing a
waste management audit tool, which was designed to provide delivery teams with a
consistent basis on which to track waste. This has since been advanced to capture percentage
of waste eliminated, reused, recycled or disposed. However there is not yet enough reliable
historic information to track trends. This may seem like slow progress but it needs to be
viewed in the context of the disaster. For example, immediately after the event,
environmental consent requirements were relaxed to allow direct discharge of wastewater
into waterways. The imperative was to avoid waste-associated health issues. Moving into
reconstruction, SCIRT had a role in creating formalized, consistent approaches to decision
making. The initial focus was on ensuring compliance with consent requirements. Once some
basic processes were in place, the organization could then start to move beyond compliance
and create waste minimization goals. These goals are reviewed as performance improves.
Conclusions
Reconstruction presents both opportunities for and challenges to incorporating sustainability
principles into decisions. The post-disaster environment is perceived to provide a window of
opportunity for improvement that would not have otherwise been possible under business-as-
usual development. However, it is highly challenging to address the short-term pressure to
reinstate services while also considering long-term social, environmental and economic
issues.
Four factors that influence how sustainability principles are integrated into decisions for
reconstruction have been discussed. Firstly, it is certain that organizational boundaries affect
the nature of decisions and how the reconstruction process is managed. This is an overarching
issue that impacts on the other factors. Secondly, it is inevitable that there are trade-offs in
ambitions, particularly because ‘technological inheritance’ will limit the possibility for
wholesale change. The opportunity for improvement or change is limited by what existed
before, the level of damage sustained and the cost and time implications of doing something
different. Thirdly, the feasibility of implementing ‘best practice’ environmental initiatives is
problematic in a post-disaster environment; it is difficult to determine what is ‘best practice’
and it can take time to establish appropriate targets. However, in a cost-constrained context,
commercial incentives help to improve performance. Finally, resilience is a concept that
facilitates long-term thinking, which is a fundamental concept of sustainability. Incorporating
resilience into decision making for infrastructure in Christchurch has materialized both
through pre-disaster action to reduce network vulnerabilities and through post-disaster
options assessment.
References