Scott Tucker and Verrick Walker, Page
A Black Swan is an event that appears random, is extremely difficult to predict, and usually occurs unexpectedly—with a huge impact. The flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 was Houston’s Black Swan. Unfortunately, we seldom think of disastrous flooding in our commercial buildings, bioterrorism in our health care facilities, blasts in our mission critical facilities, or wildfires overcoming our civic infrastructure, until another black swan dominates the news.
Over the past two decades, Page has formally helped owners and operators of critical facilities and infrastructure to plan and organize programs to harden and protect assets from a wide range of common and not-so-common threats, both natural and artificial. Beginning in 2001, we implemented a flood mitigation solution for Baylor College of Medicine’s campus in the Texas Medical Center after Tropical Storm Allison. Since that first project, we have helped academic, corporate, and government clients safeguard their facilities against fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, explosions, terrorist attacks, and even nuclear detonations. Through our work, we have developed a useful analytical framework for exploring resilient design options that applies to all types of threats, responses, and recovery efforts. This approach focuses on planning and programming for system-wide robustness, based on generalizing threats to buildings, rather than using actuarial data or calculated risk analysis.
This presentation outlines a practical methodology for architects to evaluate facility vulnerabilities throughout the programming and design phases. We will share our threat matrix, a tool developed to summarize and prioritize risks, case studies of how we have implemented this process, and the resulting robust solutions. We also will discuss operational steps that can be taken before, during, and after extreme events in conjunction with designed solutions to maximize resilience.
Preparing for a Black Swan: Planning and Programming for Risk Mitigation in Extreme Events
1. 1 June 2018
Preparing for a Black Swan:
Planning and Programming for Risk
Mitigation in Extreme Events
Scott Tucker, RA & Verrick Walker, PhD, LEED AP, CDT
2. Contents/
i. How to think about resilient
design
ii. Method for organizing and
prioritizing
iii. Illustrations
5. Deliver Us From Failure: How the Astros Endured Futility to
Become World Series Champions
LeBron James’ Cavaliers face elimination once again
6. A/E Industry and Governmental Perspectives
What is resilience?
Inherent durability or flexibility. When working within
the built environment, it’s important to have foresight:
incorporating changing environmental, social, and
economic conditions into projects. This requires
designs that are tough as well as flexible; providing
the ability to not only bounce back, but forward.
Ability to prepare for and adapt to changing
conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from
disruptions. Resilience includes the ability to
withstand and recover from deliberate attacks,
accidents, or naturally occurring threats or incidents.
7. Disaster Mitigation and Risk Reduction Perspectives
What is resilience?
Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
8. Disaster Mitigation and Risk Reduction Perspectives
Resistance
• Create the safest possible community
that we have the knowledge to design
and build in a natural hazard context
Sustainability
• Tolerate and overcome damage,
diminished productivity, and reduced
quality of life from an extreme event
without significant outside assistance.
Resilience
• Recover or bounce back to normalcy
after a disaster occurs
What is resilience?
10. Disaster Mitigation and Risk Reduction Perspectives
What is resilience?
Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
Shift focus from
Post-Disaster
Improvisation
towards
Pre-Disaster
Preparedness
11. “Bomber Crash into Empire State Building” Case Study – UAB Engineering Archive (1997)
A bomber crashing into a building is an extremely unlikely
occurrence. However, the consequences of the collapse of a
large building are very grave. How should the profession
guard against rare, but severe events? In a large
and complicated project, is there an obligation to go
beyond building code requirements? For example,
for nuclear reactor containment vessels, what extreme events
should engineers consider? What about buildings subject to
terrorist attacks?
12. Buildings and
infrastructure are
part of a system/
network
Resilient Design
• Avoid system-wide failure
• Allocate resources to implement
preventative/protective/preservative
measures
What is resilience?
13. The ones we know
• Those that are predicable, recurring
• Those addressed by building codes,
standards, best practices
Those we don’t
• Lies outside realm of expectation
• Carries extreme impact
• Causes are often determined after
the fact; but never before
A Black Swan
What threats are we concerned about?
14. What is a Black
Swan?
An event that appears random, is
extremely difficult to predict, and
usually occurs unexpectedly—
with a huge impact
Sometimes referred to as a “HILF” –
High Impact, Low Frequency Event
Definition
15. Black Swans are:
• Not addressed by building codes
• Not included in actuarial tables
• Not accounted for in construction
contingencies
• And..
• Typically not provided for in facility
designs
How does it relate to facility planning?
17. Why isn’t our design
more resilient?
• We are trained to think about
causes; then generate a solution
based on our conception of the
problem
• We get busy thinking about why
and how an event happened, and
spend our time and resources
addressing the purported cause,
rather than the next (unpredictable)
event
Applying to Facilities
19. How to broaden our
thinking:
• Built-in resilience: Address a broad
range of threats using general
responses, as a result of analysis
that focuses on overall value
• Value engineering vs. cost-cutting
• Considering all conceivable threats,
create system-wide robustness
Applying to Facilities
22. Assessment and Mitigation based on a Hierarchical Survey of System Components
Characterization
• Establish Model facility
• Identify scope and scale of potential
hazards
Assessment
• Identify vulnerabilities for each system
component contained within the Model
Facility
Mitigation
• Define general corrective actions to
address vulnerabilities
How do we define the problem?
24. Facility Component Protection Concept Matrix
Frequent appearance of the same response should reduce
the chance of a Black Swan taking down the facility/system
26. 16 Critical Infrastructure Sectors (PPD-21, 2013)
Chemical
Commercial Facilities
Communications
Critical Manufacturing
Dams
Defense Industrial Base
Emergency Services
Energy
Financial Services
Food and Agriculture
Government Facilities
Healthcare and Public Health
Information Technology
Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste
Transportation Systems
Water and Wastewater Systems
What do we protect?
27. 16 Critical Infrastructure Sectors (PPD-21, 2013)
Chemical
Commercial Facilities
Communications
Critical Manufacturing
Dams
Defense Industrial Base
Emergency Services
Energy
Financial Services
Food and Agriculture
Government Facilities
Healthcare and Public Health
Information Technology
Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste
Transportation Systems
Water and Wastewater Systems
What do we protect?
28. Unique Critical Facilities (1-2)
Hospitals (5-10)
Water Treatment (10-15)
Office Buildings,
Recreational (>20)
Grocery Stores (>30)
Fuel Stations
Number of Facilities
ImportanceofFacilities
Protect
Redundancy
Protect
Facility
System Vulnerability as a Function of Collective Exposure of Elements
29. Unique Critical Facilities (1-2)
Hospitals (5-10)
Water Treatment (10-15)
Office Buildings,
Recreational (>20)
Grocery Stores (>30)
Fuel Stations
Number of Facilities
ImportanceofFacilities
Preserve the minimum number of important facilities that
are necessary to meet expected demand during a crisis
Protect
Redundancy
Protect
Facility
System Vulnerability as a Function of Collective Exposure of Elements
30. Learn from Nature:
Redundancy = Insurance
Big is Ugly, and Fragile
The other Redundancy: Functional
Redundancy; Multiple-Use
Applying to Facilities
31. How to help Facilities
be more Resistant to
Black Swans
Why we should overbuild: There are
benefits from overbuilding that can
ultimately increase resiliency
Cumulative effect of many small
improvements
Scale matters
Applying to Facilities – Lessons Learned
32. Consider the System
Focus on general vulnerabilities
(system resilience) rather than
specific causes & effects
Provide redundancy in components,
especially dependent components
(redundancy)
“Harden” individual components for
many kinds of threats (functional
redundancy)
Find common solutions for various
threats (resilience)
Applying to Facilities
HARDEN
VULNERABLE
SUBSYSTEM
COMPONENTS
MITIGATION
PLAN
SEMICONDUCTOR
ELECTRONICS
IDENTIFY
VULNERABLE
COMPONENTS
HF
ANTENNAE
GROUNDING
DEFICIENCIES
WAVEGUIDE
APERTURES
INPUT THREAT
CRITERIA
38. World Trade Center
Lack of compartmentalization
Specialized Structural Systems
Designed for Efficiency, Economy
Fireproofing did not address large
physical impact
Insufficient redundancy (elevators,
egress)
Examples of General Robustness
39. Empire State Building
Lots of compartmentalization
Structural Systems “Hell for Stout”
Fireproofing Integral with Structure
(functional redundancy: concrete
encased steel)
Redundancy (elevators, egress) laid out
away from vulnerable points (traditional
elevator core, but innovative for its day)
Examples of General Robustness
44. Operational steps that reinforce facility design solutions to provide resilience
Flexible Operations
Transferable, Distributed
Training
Awareness, Simulation,
Practice
Stockpiling
Materials and Supplies
Pre-Arrangements
Goods and Services