Principal at Shoreline Risk; Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor at Pacific Disaster Center
I love a good analogy. Because complex topics need simplifying. We might win arguments using 'academic speak', but we’re unlikely to inspire action. And nothing simplifies better than a good analogy. I tend towards car/driving examples because everyone can relate. And while not a car analogy, I was struck at how similarly-well this “ship size" problem, as an external cause of decreasing bridge resilience, works for relating what nearly every community is experiencing as a result of increasing climate risk. And how perfectly it points to the sacrifice that lies ahead for communities and individuals if resilience remains a "valued" objective. The article references "outmoded bridge design" as contributing to Baltimore's catastrophic loss. Which should suggest that, at one time, its design was NOT outmoded. It was once appropriate. It was probably even considered "resilient" on its inauguration day. But things changed. Ships got bigger. Risk changed. The bridge, on the other hand, didn't. Gradually, it became another community feature "built to withstand a risk that's no longer relevant." I imagine how this story about bridges and ships would have been written if the tone so often taken when covering communities and climate change were used. We wouldn't likely be reading about how drastic investment must be demanded...investments we have no choice but to make. Rather, I imagine we'd be served predictions of “which ports are inevitably doomed to failure, given this alarming increase in ship size!" Somehow, we can conceptualize the simplicity of upgrading multi-billion dollar pieces of infrastructure… …yet struggle to accept that strategies exist by which communities can require, inspire, and support residents' accountability for risk - even in the face of gradual yet massive risk profile shifts as is being experienced nearly everywhere. #VBEM #DRR #resilience https://politi.co/3IVj6Dd
Great share. On another post related to this subject, I questioned the wisdom of allowing such huge boats to navigate the waterway under their own steam instead of tugboats. This is precisely why tugboats were invented, as they are more manoeuvrable and they have "safety in numbers". If this ship was being towed by tugboats, this incident would have never happened. This is not being wise after the event, but being foolish before the event.
Regina Phelps
7mo
Damon Coppola, MEM, ARM, what a great share - and the visuals are so powerful....it isn't 1972 anymore!
I think we commonly underestimate the power of good visuals.
Mēsha Richard
7mo
Excellent post Damon. The risk changed... The size of ships today is something I was just talking about this morning... think back to the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction by one of the largest cargo ships in the world...
Luis Partida
7mo
Well said
Analytics and Modeling
7moSo we need to replace or seriously upgrade all of our bridges every 30 years to keep up with ships? I suppose you're going to pay for this? Wouldn't it be easier just to regulate the size of ships? Especially given this is the second high profile disaster in a few years thanks to a ship oversized to what it was traveling through. But all massive shipping infrastructure projects need to be continually upgraded by taxpayers to keep up with companies' ship size so shipping companies can make marginally more money? If this is your role model to make more money off of climate change, I suggest you either keep looking or hope people become even more foolish.