Mississippi-Alabama Bays and Bayous 2012 Book of Abstracts

242 Pages·2012·4.84 MB·English

by  Melissa Schneider

View bookmarks to see a list of this book’s contents.
Climate and Hazard
Resilience
Session
Architecture of defense

Climate and Hazard Resilience
Oral Presentation
Allison Anderson AIA, LEED-AP*
Unabridged Architecture PLLC
[email protected]

Allison leads research efforts focusing on resilience, coastal hazards and adaptation, and
defensibility. Research informs every architectural project, including exploring precedents,
material selections, establishing program goals and tracking performance of sustainability
measures. Armouring structures against the risk of natural and manmade hazards is a key
specialty, leading to storm-resistant community and first-responder shelters.

Architecture is designed to protect people from harm. Early threats came from people, and their
weapons of war. New threats are still focused on our coastlines, but now include greater risks
from nature, including climate change and sea-level rise. Whether the disasters are natural or
man-made, the same forces affect buildings with negative consequences: wind, blast, earthquake,
pollution, flood, fire and economic plagues of all kinds. The history of resilience has been
written in survival, and the willingness to take on the challenges of protection, self-sufficiency
and the ability to set limits so that capacity is not overextended.

Resilience against climate change requires a number of strategies, including distance, elevation,
fortification and sustainability. To form the most adaptable architecture depends upon building
structures that will be permanent, and the most efficient use of resources includes designing
special buildings for extended service life. Case studies will illustrate designs for Emergency
Structures, including Operations Centers and Community Shelters in the coastal regions, sited in
both urban and rural environments.

In recovery after disaster, members of the community must suddenly meet their daily needs
alone and establish self-sufficiency, including power generation on site from renewable sources;
water collection, filtration, and use; wastewater treatment; food production; and the ability to
commute without using fuel. Case studies will include strategies employed since 2005 on
projects for cities and counties, including renewable energy solar arrays, ground-source heat
exchange systems, rainwater harvest and grass roof installations.
Integrating hazard mitigation into local planning to support community resiliency on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast

Climate and Hazard Resilience
Oral Presentation
Allison Beasley, CEcD, IOM
Southern Mississippi Planning and Development District
[email protected]

Allison Beasley is the planning director at Southern Mississippi Planning and Development
District, a 15-county regional planning agency. She has a master’s degree in economic
development and holds the Certified Economic Developer designation from the International
Economic Development Council.

Integrating Hazard Mitigation into Local Planning to Support Community Resiliency on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast is a research project currently being conducted by Southern Mississippi
Planning and Development District with funding from Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant
Consortium. The project was conceived with the understanding that planning documents in most
of the counties and cities in Coastal Mississippi are in two distinct categories: those that plan for
future growth and those that address hazards and emergency management.

Investigators believe that the two plan groups likely have some linkages but seldom lack shared
values or goals and objectives. Comprehensive planning is usually the responsibility of a
planning or zoning department and hazard mitigation planning is conducted by emergency
managers. If local governments are going to make sound planning decisions related to future
growth, hazard impacts and coastal resiliency must be incorporated into the comprehensive
planning process and the planning documents.

The first step in moving toward this integration is to identify the connections and the gaps
between the two types of planning documents. Recommendations for improved linkages must
then be made to local governments. Integrating hazard mitigation principles into comprehensive
planning and land use strategies will reduce future damage to property and public facilities,
avoid development in hazardous areas and provide adequate public shelters and reduce hurricane
evacuation times.

The hypothesis for the study is that there are definitive ways to link the hazard mitigation plans
to comprehensive plans. Objectives for the investigation are as follows:
Identify existing connections between hazard mitigation plans and comprehensive plans
Identify existing gaps or missing connections between hazard mitigation plans and
comprehensive plans
Develop recommendations on how to specifically link hazard mitigation principles to the
comprehensive plans
Develop policy recommendations related to mandates for hazard mitigation planning and
comprehensive planning in Mississippi

The investigation is under way and results will be finalized and published after February 2013.
Determining localized risk perception and impacts of predicted sea-level rise (SLR) to
engineered versus natural landscapes to enhance stakeholder SLR mitigation planning

Climate and Hazard Resilience
Oral Presentation
Matthew Bethel1 *, Wei Wu2, Patrick Biber2, Chongfeng Gong2, Hailong Huang2, Michelle
Gremillion3 and Corey Miller3
1University of New Orleans-Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences, 2University of
Southern Mississippi-Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, 3University of New Orleans-Center for
Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology
[email protected]

Dr. Matthew Bethel is a Postdoc researcher/project manager at the University of New Orleans
(UNO). He earned his Ph.D. in applied environmental science and engineering from UNO. His
professional interest is in the application of geospatial technology in multi-disciplinary research
that addresses information needs for ecological decision support systems.
Marshes are essential buffer zones between land and water in estuaries and coastal zones, they
are disappearing rapidly, and those that remain are often in poor health. The most dramatic
coastal marsh losses in the United States are in the northern Gulf of Mexico. These disappearing
marshes serve as a vital habitat for a diverse and unique range of flora and fauna, a cushion
between coastal waterfront-dependent communities and the open waters of the Gulf, and an
integral resource for the economic and social viability of these communities. Therefore, coastal
community leaders, government officials and natural resource managers must be able to
accurately assess and predict a given coastal landscape’s sustainability and/or vulnerability,
especially as this coastal habitat continues to undergo rapid and dramatic changes associated
with natural and anthropogenic activities, such as accelerated relative sea-level rise (SLR).
Currently, a multi-disciplinary research team is conducting a NOAA Sea Grant-funded project to
use a regional approach to refine the NOAA SLR Visualization Tool for local implementation in
areas experiencing two different driving mechanisms of coastal wetland habitat change
(subsidence versus erosion). This collaborative research aims to determine the different ways in
which two different stakeholder groups (traditional ecosystem users versus resource managers)
evaluate risk and plan mitigation strategies associated with coastal habitat change due to
predicted SLR resulting from climate change.
To achieve this goal, we are determining: (1) a method for producing localized
vulnerability/sustainability maps based on predicted inundation and redistribution of coastal
wetlands under accelerated SLR for two regionally representative systems; the first is an
ecosystem-dependent coastal Louisiana indigenous Native American community, and the second
is a Mississippi natural coastal preserve. Results from physical information derived from data
and modeling of subsidence, erosion, engineered restoration and coastal protection features,
historical land loss, and future land prediction under SLR that are complemented with traditional
ecological knowledge (TEK) offered by the collaborating local ecosystem users will be
integrated for these assessments; and (2) how and whether the results of such an approach can
provide more useful information for assessing localized impacts of SLR and associated risk that
may later be applied across the Gulf Coast by Sea Grant and the NOAA Coastal Services Center
among others. We are in the first year of this two-year research project, and intend to present the
work to date in achieving the project objectives that includes: scientific field data collected
related to marsh vegetation biomass characteristics, TEK data collection activities with the local
experts, preliminary data analysis results, etc.
Resilient coastal construction: Successes, needs and opportunities
Climate and Hazard Resilience
Oral Presentation
Alexandra Cary1*, Darius Grimes2 and Carl Schneider3
1Smart Home America, 2Disaster-Smart Inspection Consulting, 3Schneider Insurance
[email protected]

Alexandra Cary is the executive director of Smart Home America. Her skills include sustainable
and resilient construction and training others in these practices. She is a licensed Home Builder
with eight years experience in the field working with Habitat for Humanity, the US Green
Building Council and Baldwin County Home Builders.
Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina made evident the vulnerability of our coastal communities and
demonstrated the need for coastal resiliency, with the catastrophic losses of life and property in
addition to the overall community economic losses. Since these disasters, partnerships were born
from this need between organizations like Smart Home America, Habitat for Humanity, Disaster
Smart Inspection Consulting, The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS),
State Farm Insurance, the Coastal Recovery Commission and many other local stakeholders.
Smart Home America began addressing this issue through education, outreach, introduction and
implementation of regulatory solutions and community demonstration projects. Mandated
discounts on insurance premiums for homes built to IBHS’s Fortified designation have
encouraged homeowners to implement these changes and their research has instigated changes in
local building codes as well. Demonstration projects with Habitat for Humanity have not only
changed the way that the organization builds their homes, but has shown that these disaster
resistant practices can be done affordably, with a three percent increase in construction costs,
resulting in a 25 percent insurance premium savings. These results have convinced other home
builders and residents to follow suit.

Due to the efforts of Smart Home American and their partners, Baldwin County and the
municipalities throughout have adopted a Coastal Code supplement that mandates measures such
as a Sealed Roof Deck and Roof Deck Attachment Requirements for all new homes and re-roofs.
IBHS has estimate that the impact to loss reduction from this change alone could be as much as
$11,600 per home. With and average of 1100 new and re-roofs per year, and an average of 50
percent of all structures damaged in a 50 year event, the loss reduction estimate for Baldwin
County alone is $6 million per year. With an increase in roofing cost of less than $1500 per
home, this means $8 to $10 loss reduction for every $1 spent. These figures do not include the
impact of loss of use and the community economic impact that results from displaced residents.
The implementation of these codes and the increasing number of Fortified homes built and
mitigated on the Gulf Coast is an encouraging start, but there are many more opportunities yet to
be realized. The results from the Baldwin County Habitat demonstration project have prompted
other Habitat demonstration projects across the coast, to be used as educational opportunities for
those communities. The implementation of the Coastal Code Supplement has started
conversations in other communities along the Gulf Coast that are still negotiating the
implementation of stronger codes. All of these developments will ultimately result in safer,
stronger, less vulnerable Gulf Coast communities when the next disaster strikes.
Habitat Family in front of their
Fortified Home
Community Economic Preparedness: An Index Designed to Test the Economic
Preparedness of Rural Communities
Climate and Hazard Resilience
Poster Presentation
Randy Y. Coker1*, Benedict C. Posadas1, Amanda Seymour1, Scott A. Langlois1 and Christine
E. Coker1
1Mississippi State University, Coastal Research and Extension Center
[email protected]

In 2010, the Mississippi State University, Center for Urban Rural Interface Studies (CURIS)
conducted a research and outreach program on Community Economic Preparedness in the Gulf
of Mexico Region. The goal of this project was to evaluate the overall community economic
preparedness of rural counties and parishes. Community Economic Preparedness involves
communities actively engaged in pursuing fundamental steps toward economic resilience and
disaster management. Communities with local economies which are resilient to the effects of
natural disaster will experience quick financial and physical recovery.
The Community Economic Preparedness Index (CEPI) measures a county’s or parish’s
economic preparedness level based on fifteen different categories:
economic development plan, effective zoning ordinances, industrial site capabilities,
separate development organization, commercial development capabilities, small business
development, community infrastructure, utilities capabilities, education access/quality,
financial support available, strength of tourism boards, abilities/availability of labor
force, natural disaster susceptibility, quality of life, and local government structure.
Each of these variables is then given a numeric value which is used to give each county or parish
an overall economic preparedness score representing the current level of economic preparedness.
The CURIS Region includes 20 counties and parishes in four of the five coastal states bordering
the Gulf of Mexico: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. These 20 counties were used
as the basis for distribution of the CEPI Survey. A total of 60 survey forms were mailed to these
20 counties and parishes. Survey forms were mailed to the Chamber of Commerce, Board of
Supervisors, and Economic Development Commission in each county or parish, along with
instructions on how to complete it and a postage paid envelope to return the completed survey.
A total of 2 mailings were sent out in May and June 2010. Of the 60 targeted CEPI survey
participants, 17 completed surveys were returned, representing a response rate of 28.3%.
The data from the completed surveys have been analyzed, and each preparedness category, as
well as, an overall average CEPI has been calculated. The Indices were assigned a value
between zero and one, with one being the highest, or most prepared; and zero being the lowest or
least prepared. The preliminary results indicate an overall average CEPI of 0.51 for the
participating respondent counties. The highest average category score was found to be 0.83 in
Industrial Site Capabilities, while the lowest average category score was listed at 0.12 in
Effectiveness of County Zoning Ordinances. A more in-depth representation of these results will
be represented in the poster.