I connect this to for instance the situation in Chile after the earthquake in feb 2010. (I have been there to work on "reconstruction".)
This is definitely a design situation.
1) In my experience a key point is not to "reconstruct" or "rebuild", as there is good reason to believe that this may happen again. A new town/city/village has to be designed that will be resilient to similar, and other foreseeable, events. To assure this the new towns etc should not be a copy of the old.
2) As lots of things, structures etc etc is destroyed this also offers a great potential to do something new and different.
The design issue is "what future do we want", not "how do we reconstruct what was lost". For the people in the area, however, there is most likely a strong, human need to get back, to recover, rebuild and anything that turns life back to the situation before the disaster. (In Indonesia there are examples of new houses that was built following the tsunami, that were flooded again even before they were finished.) Going back is however seldom even technically possible. To take the simplest example you cannot build new houses to old standards. For instance old apartments may have been having a low rent owing to limited bathrooms. It is probably not a an option to build new houses with low rents and inadequate bathrooms. People from the outside can provide vital assistance in managing this situation.
In my experience, with relocating mining towns and earthquake response, the situation is far more challenging than I thought before I started working on them. But it also offers a large potential.
I write "in my experience" as there is clearly a need to further research and development knowledge around this as a design issue. Most of the "disaster" literature I have come across appears to center on "rescue" and "emergence" rather than "recovery" and "reconstruction", to use one phase model for disaster management. For instance: practitioner experts tell me that a lot of energy and support, both from locals and international groups, are available the first 6-12 months. Then local volunteers get burned out and international concern move to new events. In Chile, for instance, there are still a large number of people living in temporary houses built following the 1960 earthquake.
In Sweden we are working on establishing an center on urban relocation, based on the increasing needs around the wold on both response to, and prevention, of such natural or man-made disasters. We offer the possibility to gain knowledge from the current relocation of two mining towns, as they are being destroyed, intentionally and under more controlled forms than with natural disasters, but to perhaps an even more drastic effect, as they will be blasted and sent hundreds of meters below ground.
Best wishes and hopes to the people in Australia,
Lars
.........................................................................
LARS ALBINSSON
+46 (0) 70 592 70 45
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CALISTOGA SPRINGS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY OF BORÅS
LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY
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17 jan 2011 kl. 16.17 skrev Terence Love:
Hi Simon,
Good you are safe. I hope same for Vesna and rest of the design research
crew at QUT.
Now would appear to be a good time for asking some serious design research
questions to avoid the problems next time.
Did the design of flood management strategies fail in the Brisbane flood
plain? If so, why?
In the news, there has been widespread claims that the flash floods were
totally unexpected an unpredictable and thus nothing could have been done.
The designs of flood run off and flash flood hydrodynamic models is well
established and tested. In the early 70s, I remember working with a friend
who was creating this kind of model and they were well established then. The
maths is relatively straightforward and there are commercial and
locally-developed computer packages that do the job.
Second, it is odd to say that flash floods arrived completely unexpected.
The claim in the media there was not time for disaster response mechanism
to be designed and implemented is odd. The run off models can be used to
identify weather conditions that will cause flash flooding. The time gap
between seeing forecast of those kind of weather conditions gives days or
weeks of notification of rapidly rising flood water is days or weeks. One
hydrogeologist online suggested in mid December the rain forecast for
December would likely see flash flooding in Brisbane area.
Similarly, the use of runoff flood models provides the basis for designing
off the food response processes that can be initiated fast. These include
radio, tv and sms warnings to householders living in areas prone to
occasional flash flooding that can give substantial notice of high risk
ahead of time.
Third, there are urban design questions relating to locating buildings in
high flood risk areas.
Four are design research questions relating to the design of preinstalled
flood prevention approaches including sufficient levees and the use of
existing water storage capacity to take the peak off the water flow and
effectively lengthen the time of flow, hence reducing flooding levels.
Recent reports today are that dams integrated into the flood control
strategy did not release water early enough and hence did not offer enough
absorption capacity to reduce the flood peak. There may be political or
commercial reasons for these decisions.
Five are questions about the design of decision support systems used, their
implementation and how they shaped the design of flood emergency strategies
(including whether people were notified and how soon).
Six is the relative balance of hydrological modelling and hydrodynamic
modelling. The former can be viewed as more suitable for decisions about
water quality and water conservation, the latter is a design tool more
associated with the dynamics of water flow (such as flash flooding
conditions). When I searched the web about Queensland flood modelling, I
found mostly info about hydrological modelling in the flood management
plans.
Addressing the above issues would appear to be useful design research. With
the Queensland floods being claimed as a bigger disaster than Katrina, the
stakes and benefits are high. This kind of situation would appear to offer
significant opportunities for design researchers with the appropriate
research skills to contribute strongly to improving outcomes in similar
adverse climate events.
I'd be interested to know how many design researchers on phd-design are
working in this area and whether there is interest to form some kind of
group.
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM
Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Centre
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Member of International Scientific Council UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Simon
Lawry
Sent: Monday, 17 January 2011 12:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Flood water receding, all systems go :)
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that the library at QUT has switched back on as
of this morning. I've got access again and things are running along
smoothly. There is widespread devastation across Brisbane and the state.
I've gotten in and helped with some of the clean up amongst all the writing.
The response from the community has been incredible. Strangers were walking
off the street to help the friend I was helping. We were fed by people
driving round with a BBQ on the back of the truck. I feel this is similar to
what has happened with my situation here. I've had such incredible support.
People I have never met before have offered assistance, going well out of
their way to help me get the resources I needed to continue my research. I
haven't had to use many of the offers of assistance, because I have had so
many. I'm deeply touched by the support that has been offered to me from all
across the world. I want to thank you all for your support, it's moving.
If you would like to do something else for other people effected by the
floods, please check out www.floodaid.com.au.
Also, If you would like to check out the extent of the floods, have a look
at www.nearmap.com, go to Brisbane and flick between the latest photo and
the previous photo to get a comparison (click on the drop down menu near the
middle of the screen at the top). it's amazing.
Once again, thank you all for your support, it has been incredible.
Simon Lawry
PhD Candidate
School of Design
Queensland University of Technology
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