Building Resilient Infrastructure

Recent natural disasters have exposed a critical problem with America’s existing infrastructure: 

our roads, buildings, and highways haven’t been built to be resilient to the natural disasters that we are likely to face this century. 

It’s not just existing infrastructure that needs help; new infrastructure should be built to be resilient to future catastrophes as well. 

Too often the hazards that we experienced in the past guide how new infrastructure is built... 

but it’s critical to consider new and potential threats that could arise in the future. 

Failing to plan for future risks could lead to costly repairs or catastrophic failures, and may reduce the infrastructure’s expected lifespan. 

And when existing roads and bridges are damaged, destroyed, or replaced, they shouldn’t be built back to how they were. 

Instead, they should be built back better than they were originally. 

It may sound expensive, but every dollar we invest in resilient infrastructure today, saves us from spending six dollars in the future. 

That doesn’t mean replacing everything overnight. 

But it does mean embracing a resiliency mindset when building new roads, bridges, or buildings.