Infrastructural Ecology: Embedding Resilience in Public Works

Abstract

The destabilization of earth’s climate—manifest today in rising sea levels, more frequent droughts, deluges, and rising temperatures—demands expansive thinking in our infrastructural investments. Such volatility imperils coastal and riverine populations, degrades agriculture, and fosters water insecurity. We require innovative, multidimensional solutions to these public works challenges. Infrastructural ecology is a planning paradigm that emulates the closed-loop, sharing logic of natural ecosystems. It suggests that features of our power, water, sanitation, transport, and food systems may be strategically combined, collocated, or otherwise linked for mutual benefit. Such interconnected systems then can cascade (pass along) waste energy or water and nutrients for another’s reuse, arrangements that can reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while lowering demand for new resource inputs. Innovative examples from both industrialized as well as developing nations illustrate the efficacy of these strategies. The exemplary projects described here include smart coastal solutions, water-wise innovations, and coping strategies for warming cities.

Managing Rather Than Avoiding “Difficulties” in Building Landscape Resilience

“…It should seek to avoid irrecoverable damage to an ecosystem's resilience or a human population's sustainable livelihoods, which is especially crucial when a population's livelihoods or well-being is closely connected to an ecosystem and natural resources [7,41,67,68]. Thus, building all parts of landscape resilience, that is the ability to adapt, change, and reorganise while coping with disturbance and meeting shocks, is increasingly important for a just and sustainable world [55,[69][70][71].…”

Exploring the food–energy–water nexus approach to enhance coastal community resilience research and planning

“…The socio-ecosystem (SES) approach was advocated for to guide food-energy-water research as it links ecosystem supporting services (e.g., energy, nutrient, and water processes) with provisioning services (e.g., food, charcoal, and clean water) (Maass, 2017). The 'infrastructural ecology' planning paradigm embraces the principles of natural ecosystems (Brown, 2019). Infrastructural ecology is when human systems are designed to work together just as ecological systems do, by sharing structures or space to produce efficiencies.…”

“…Strategies for how a food-energy-water nexus approach can be implemented to help increase coastal resilience were incorporated in four studies (Table 4). Numerous examples were provided from all over the world to demonstrate an infrastructural ecology approach to show how power, water, sanitation, transport, and food systems can be combined or linked (Brown, 2019). Combining systems offers advantages such as, passing along waste, water, or nutrients for use in another system, combining resources and reducing demand for additional inputs thereby creating efficiencies.…”

“…For example, after Hurricane Sandy, healthcare facilities had to stop operations due to an electrical outage, lack of access to water, and transportation (Cimellaro et al, 2019). Health was also included in terms of heat-related illness, especially with the increasing temperatures associated with climate change and the urban heat island effect (Brown, 2019). In terms of environmental justice in Puerto Rico, the lower-income communities located next to toxic storage facilities (like the mountain of coal ash from the coal power plant) were at greater risk from flood events due to potential spills (García-López, 2018).…”

“…Infrastructural ecology: embedding resilience in public works (Brown, 2019) Floating PV over reservoirs (E-W)…”