Preparing New York City for hurricanes

Boyd Cohen in Fast Company: Thankfully, Hurricane Irene turned out to be much weaker than predicted. Despite its relative weakness compared to projections, Irene still wreaked havoc up and down the East Coast, leading to at least 40 deaths, loss of power for 9 million people and billions in damages.

Many of us in North America were transfixed by New York City because of its symbolic importance, its sheer density and the rare occurrence of a hurricane in the city (the last hurricane to threaten New York was in 1985). While watching the events unfold and hearing the stories of what Mayor Bloomberg and his team were doing to prepare for the worst, I couldn’t help but think that there is so much more we could be doing to prepare our cities for extreme storm events.

…What if GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile technology were completely ubiquitous in all parts of the city, including the poorest parts? City administrators could enter in the GPS coordinates of everything from at-risk neighborhoods and rivers to the location of the nearest safe shelters, the nearest transit option to escape the city to higher ground and the nearest available potable water sources and much more. Assuming all citizens had access to GPS-enabled devices, citizens in distress could indicate with a text to 911 that they were in trouble and the GPS coordinates would be instantaneously available to first responders. With some kind of opt-in system, residents could even receive real-time text updates tied to their GPS coordinates.

…What if the entire transit system--buses, light rail, metro, and subway--were all connected with real-time digital systems? What if they could be shut down and turned on like we turn on and off our lights? What if, in the event of a major storm, evacuation, or terrorist attack, administrators could instantly re-route all transit and reverse the direction of the metro lines so that they all leave the city? While there are few--if any--examples of transit systems this smart yet, pieces of these solutions already exist.

…ConEdison, a major utility in the New York City area, preemptively shut down power to neighborhoods at most risk in advance of Irene. One of the reasons for this was fear that power would go out while someone was in an elevator. Instead of shutting down city blocks due to concerns about power going in and out in a few buildings, smart grids would allow utilities to isolate at-risk buildings and easily shut down and restart power. Smart grids combined with distributed energy could allow for the redistribution of energy to affected buildings....

The High Line in Manhattan, New York City at West 20th Street, looking downtown (south), shot by Beyond My Ken, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported