“Neighbors can hear the alarm so they call us, but when we get up to the home, it's vacant, locked up and we're unable to access them,”

Such calls are distracting firefighters from other more important calls in inhabited homes and putting a strain on the public emergency system.

via ABC15 News.

Model cities aren’t just for show; they can have real utility. In 1957 the US Army Corps of Engineers created the Bay Model, a replica of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta meant to simulate the impact of public works projects and disasters—natural and man-made—on currents and tides.

Terence Russell at Wired Magazine tells us how scale models of cities are increasingly used for urban planning and design applications.

As John McQuaid at Huffington Post points out, the basic problem of New Orleans is “its siting, mostly below sea level, on an eroding, hurricane-prone river delta.” This context demands state and federal intervention if at all New Orleans should be considered suited for habitation. Man’s desire for controlling nature to suit his habitation needs does not necessarily triumph’s nature eventual dominance. I’ve no strong opinions whether New Orleans should or should not be developed but if it is meant to be built through a bottom up approach, it should continue on that path even in eventuality of a natural disaster.

Update: Nicole writes in to mention that she believes in good government that maintains flood control infrastructure and protect citizens from crime. I agree but like any rational entity, government will not giveth unless it can taketh even it means control over planning processes. Extremes in governance systems be it totally state-controlled or completely individualistic may not work and efforts should be made to find an amicable middle-ground.

Couple of colleagues in a Sustainable Urbanism class had proposed floating homes as a potential solution for homes in New Orleans. This floating villa designed by Swedish architect, Staffan Strindberg, currently situated in the town of Kalmar on the east coast of Sweden may be a tad fancy for residents of New Orleans especially for those whose houses got washed away. But definitely a technology worth exploring, right?

Americans increasingly insist on living in dense, vertical cities near water. About 91 percent of Americans now live in places at a moderate-to-high risk of earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, high-wind damage, or terrorism.

We concentrate ourselves, and the mere fact of concentration makes for greater calamity when the hazard, whatever it is, strikes. That we concentrate ourselves in places that are naturally dangerous makes it worse. Ultimately, our disrespect and disregard for the environment (we assume we can tame nature) is something that, if unabated, will lead to more suffering.

Something that I have always believed and quoted.

Mitigation couple with insurance coverage should be considered as an appropriate measure of risk prevention instead of depending solely on insurance. FEMA defines mitigation as “sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people and property from hazards and their effects.” However due to low frequency of natural hazards or skewed risk perceptions, homeowners are unlikely to indulge in mitigation efforts apart from buying property insurance. The spillover effects of personal losses during a large-scale natural disaster often transforms an otherwise personal and private loss into a social risk in form of homelessness, displacement, unemployment, and rise in cost of public services.

Such a transformation almost mandates government action in an otherwise private insurance market and government aims to incorporate mitigation measures instead of merely diverting public funds towards disaster relief. The private insurance industry has also realized the importance of better building codes and mitigation processes to avoid hazard risks. Thus, it is important not only for the government but also for the private insurers to develop models that link mitigation with insurance so as to provide greater reliability and reduced uncertainty to assess costs and losses for a natural disaster.

The government has attempted to pass several legislative acts in order to increase insurance coverage and promote mitigation. The HR 4480 initiated in 1990 attempted to protect private insurers by transferring the risk to the federal government. Senate Bill 1350 considered increasing the availability of disaster insurance and encourage hazard mitigation to reduce reliance on federal assistance.

But after deliberations in the House of Representatives and the Senate, it was clear that in order to have any federal control over disaster relief and insurance it would incorporate imposing sufficient hazard mitigation techniques and have federal oversight and control. It would also entail sharing risk with the private sector and make insurance purchase mandatory for federally related mortgages. But due to limited success in mandatory implementations of the national flood insurance requirements, these legislative actions met with limited success.

Hazard mitigation has to be implemented either through voluntary action or through enforcement of government regulations, ordinances, and codes at the local level. But such enforcement depends on the institutional capacity of the local government. It has to be clear in statues and regulations as to what actions governments are required to take and should specify relationships between different subdivisions of the government. The success of such a plan is dependant on the land management goals incorporated in the comprehensive plans and the previous experience with similar disasters.

Implementation of mitigation measures through insurance has lead to identification of 8 broad themes and 15 specific objectives. The building codes should be made broader in order to go beyond protecting just life of the occupants and should be implemented statewide instead of varying across different jurisdictions. More public education and research on retrofitting structures with disaster preventive measures should be emphasized.

Kunreuther’s six objectives that include more stringent building codes, seals of approval on structures meeting codes, insurance that encourages mitigation, all-hazard insurance provision, government reinsurance, and subsidies for low-income families seems to address the crucial aspects of the relationship between mitigation and insurance. Provision of financial incentives through reduced premiums and limited availability of insurance also might encourage wider acceptance.
References:

Kunreuther, Howard. “A Program for Reducing Disaster Losses Through Insurance” in Paying the Price, Howard Kunreuther and Richard Roth eds., 1998 National Academy of Sciences Press.