Project: The Gulf Research Program (GRP) will host an interactive workshop to identify investment priorities that strengthen infrastructure resilience and improve the services from infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico region. Without a vision to meet future infrastructure needs and plans to realize that vision, our nation will repeatedly repair obsolete infrastructure and still suffer the same deadly consequences of lost power, water, transportation, and other services in future disasters. The Gulf of Mexico region, with rising sea levels, climate change that produces more frequent and more intense hurricanes, and aging or abandoned infrastructure both on- and off-shore, faces particularly acute and very costly risks. Our nation needs to consider investments needed now to make our critical infrastructure more resilient and responsive to our needs in the future.
The workshop will employ interactive exercises using two scenarios of natural disasters that could result in major failures of current infrastructure. Rather than driving response exercises, the scenarios serve as starting points for discussions identifying both the investments that could prevent or mitigate the effects of future infrastructure failures and the obstacles to making those investments. Using their subject-matter expertise and their experience in the workshop, participants will provide input on evaluation criteria and obstacles to smart investments. Participants will join in person for 2 of 3 days.
Building on this first step, the GRP aims to support efforts to prioritize investments in infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico region. The project will address key policy questions:
- What choices would maximize resilience return on federal investments in infrastructure and promote equity, fairness, economic effectiveness and other goals and requirements?
- How can we overcome obstacles to making the best investments in infrastructure?
- How can we mitigate private infrastructure assets from becoming public liabilities?
This activity will jumpstart a multiyear initiative of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to advise the federal government on infrastructure-investment priorities to make U.S. systems more responsive to modern needs and more resilient to environmental and social changes.
Key audiences will be federal and state trustees and regulators, NGOs, academia, industry, and broad community stakeholders. The GRP seeks to harness the collective experience and knowledge of these participants to set a shared agenda to enhance resilience of human and natural systems to a disaster.
Motivation: Robust infrastructure investment formed the foundation for U.S. growth from the 1950s to the present day, but U.S. infrastructure is aging and it has not served all communities in the United States equitably. A combination of deferred maintenance, delayed replacement, and indefinite reliance on piecemeal and temporary fixes has undermined the United States’ ability to respond to developments that exceed planned capacity, whether that is local population growth, changing climate, or increased commerce. Many infrastructure development decisions have further disadvantaged marginalized communities. The federal government now spends billions to tens of billions of dollars per year rebuilding infrastructure damaged or destroyed by natural disasters, and U.S. infrastructure needs are estimated in the trillions of dollars. Moreover, the infrastructure landscape in the U.S. is highly complex, an overlapping web of private sector, local, state, regional, and federal systems, owners, operators, and regulators.
The GRP is mandated to enhance the safety of “offshore hydrocarbon production and transportation in the Gulf of Mexico and the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States,” as well as to “enhance human health and community resilience.” In the Gulf region, the effects of aging or legacy infrastructure dynamically interact with climate change impacts, other environmental stressors, social and economic change, and a dynamic energy industry to produce a rich context in which to explore infrastructure investment opportunities. Further, natural disasters are common in the region, with acute episodes that trigger billions of dollars each year in federal disaster relief funding for infrastructure rebuilding. The region and the nation miss major opportunities each time we simply restore the infrastructure rather than updating the infrastructure to meet anticipated needs and strengthening resilience.