General 4 — ARISE-US

Infrastructure

ARISE-US Infrastructure Activities

Area Overview

This program area builds awareness of the need for more resilient infrastructure and communities, and develops free tools and methods for helping to achieve this.

Board Leader - Dr. Peter Williams

Dr Peter Williams currently chairs ARISE-US. The lead author of the UN's Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities, now used by some 350 cities globally, he has also led or participated in numerous ARISE projects such as the Public Health Addendum, and a further UN Scorecard for the resilience of industrial and commercial real estate.

Peter has over 35 years’ experience in helping businesses and governments adapt to, and make the most of, new technology. Peter was accorded the honor of being named an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2009, and he also lectured at Stanford University for several years on Smart Cities and Communities. A native of the UK, he has lived in the US since 1999, and is married with three adult children. His PhD was awarded from the University of Bath, England.

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Goals

Critical assets

Ground-breaking, free, Critical Asset Management System for inventorying critical assets and the links or dependencies between them.

Wildfires

Identify why and how to make infrastructure more resilient to wildfires. Includes the role of green infrastructure in wildfire risk mitigation.

Risk Reduction

Develop unique strategies to make infrastructure more resilient to disasters. Risk reduction strategies created for real situations and jurisdictions worldwide.

Action Guide

Enable scorecard users to turn findings into action - coherent, funded, successful programs of DRR investments sustainably and affordably.

Critical Asset Management System - CAMS

Overview

Few cities can identify all their critical assets or the dependencies between them. Consequently they are at risk of unforeseen cascading failures when a disaster strikes. CAMS enables cities and small states to identify critical assets across multiple systems (energy, water/sanitation, communications, roads, healthcare, government, education, ports...) and their interdependencies. In this way, risk of cascading failures can be detected in advance, planned for, and eventually mitigated. CAMS is free, and open sourced, with a growing community of coders adding function to the tool. It can also be used in for-profit business activities such as consulting or software creation.

What we Need

Users!
"Evangelists" to promote CAMS in different parts of the world
Coders and programmers to add functionality
Software and consulting companies who want to embed CAMS in their for-profit offerings

Successes

Validation of need from multiple future users
Minimum viable product tested and available
English and Spanish versions of the tool and user documentation available.
2 pilot users, with more under discussion
Growing global awareness of CAMS

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Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Toolkit

Overview

Information and resources for communities on wildfire issues are fragmented, incompatible and thus hard to locate or combine into effective solutions. The Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Toolkit will assemble in one place everything communities with different wildfire risks (mountains/forests, mixed grassland, prairies, etc) need to reduce their risk at the property, neighborhood and landscape scales. It will include a new scorecard for wildfire risk and integrate other assessments within this, an action planner, and extensive advisory material and references on all aspects of mitigating risk. Eventually it may link to contractors and service providers who can help with risk mitigation.

What we Need

Expertise on all aspects of wildfire risk reduction: data and analysis, environmental management, civil engineering, community engagement, business engagement, insurance and financing.
Authors;
Reviewers;
Communities to test and evaluate what we create.

Successes

Validation of need;
Structure and contents of Version 1 agreed, and now being drafted;
Initial group of volunteer experts and writers assembled;
Engagement from CalFire ;
Engagement from several communities interested in being users.

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Scorecard Action Guide

Overview

The UN City Disaster Resilience Scorecard, authored by ARISE-US, has been used by over 350 cities around the world to baseline their current resilience, and the likely impact of climate change. However, baselines, per se, do not tell users how to move forward - what remedial actions to take, priorities, how to get funding, governance strictures, integration with existing plans, how to engage communities, and so on. The Action Guide is designed to address that gap.