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October 30, 2019The Post-Sandy Initiative Publication on the 7th Anniversary of Superstorm Sandy
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On the seventh anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, AIANY’s Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee (DfRR) would like to highlight the Post-Sandy Initiative publication released a few short months after the storm affected the region in such significant, paradigm-shifting ways.
The initiative brought together stakeholders from across the AEC industry, city agencies, federal agency representatives, and community leadership to create a robust set of recommendations aimed at advancing the city and the region toward a resilient future—as relevant today as in 2012.
We have made much progress in the past seven years, yet much remains to be done to accomplish the collective goals set out in the report.
The document remains a cornerstone of the idea of building resilient capacity—for New York City and its enormous metro area, as well as for other cities around the United States and the world that are struggling to gain traction against the effects of climate change
We invite you to read the report and its Executive Summary as one way to understand how we might create a blueprint for better design planning, mitigation, and adaptation as we move forward in this era of rapid climate change.
Read the Post-Sandy Initiative: Full Report | Executive Summary
Design for Risk and Reconstruction
The Design for Risk & Reconstruction Committee (DfRR) harnesses the design community's expertise to address disaster mitigation and adaptation in situations caused by major events that threaten people in the built environment, such as major storms, extreme heat, climate change, sea-level rise, terrorist attacks, etc. Our mission is to foster awareness within the profession and the public of the necessity of anticipating risk at multiple scales, from a single building to comprehensive regional planning. Our goals: To formulate programs that engage the profession, stakeholders (public), and policymakers in important conversations around these issues; To develop appropriate professional-public partnerships to bring leaders and innovators together; To examine the design sequence to address mitigating natural and human-made disasters, developing disaster preparedness scenarios, mobilizing disaster relief response and recovery, and planning and executing reconstruction projects; To improve the designed environment to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its inhabitants—functionally, technically, economically, and aesthetically. Illya Azaroff, FAIA, and Lance Jay Brown, FAIA founded DfRR 10 years ago in recognition of the growing need to address the increasing vulnerabilities that communities face across the world. The Board of the AIA New York Chapter formally established DfRR on May 17, 2011, and sanctioned the committee name on June 21, 2011. Meetings typically occur on the second Wednesday of every month.
