Hurricane Disaster Infrastructure Resilience and Planning Workshop II

As a continuation of the Hurricane Disaster Infrastructure Resilience and Planning Workshop carried out by American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) through a grant program from the United Engineering Foundation (UEF), Eng. Hanna Rodríguez from the IEMES, PSC team was invited and participated as a speaker last July 25-26, 2018. Eng. Carmen M. Figueroa from IEMES, PSC participated in the first workshop in Houston Texas in March of this year; follow this link to read more about her experience.

For this second workshop, Eng. Rodríguez was part of a group of professionals, primarily engineers with the goal of finalizing details for a white paper and framework documents to be available to the engineering community on resiliency. Different engineering disciplines and related professions will be able to utilize such framework as a guide for taking into consideration in resilient design going forth. 

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As also members and leaders of the PR Professional College of Engineers and Land Surveyors (CIAPR, per its Spanish acronym), Eng. Rodríguez and Ms. Ruth Lailany Trujillo Rodríguez, PLS, PPL were invited to speak on behalf of the island. LS Trujillo provided perspectives on the importance of geospatial knowledge of utilities and critical infrastructures, while Eng. Rodríguez provided an overview of the waste management industry in PR and the USVI, both before and after the 2017 Hurricane Season. 

The group, a large part of which were academic engineering professionals, a series of proposed goals for the engineering community were developed and will be documented in the resulting reports. All goals were documented in addition to corresponding sets of progressive steps or tasks to achieve said resiliency goals. Important discussions regarding design of resilient infrastructure and the extent of an engineer's responsibility in developing a resilient community were part of this one and a half-day workshop. 

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Look out for the final deliverables to be published by AIChE in the coming weeks. In the mean time visit our website to find available presentations: www.aiche.org/conferences/hurricane-disaster-infrastructure-resilience-and-planning-workshop/2018/technical-program-madison

A very special and personal thank you to facilitators from AIChE ​​​who went out of their way to keep the group in a tight and comprehensive schedule:

• Michelle Bryner
• Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay
• Sean Liu
• Hailey Murphy