Rebuilding needs to be based on data, not just local concerns
June 03, 2025
Writing for Engineering News-Record, Jeff Albee recommends a connected data approach to reconstruction after natural disasters
Countless communities ask themselves this question: After facing devastating flooding, fires, and wind, should they rebuild?
If they do, can anything withstand a future natural disaster? Engineers, designers, policymakers, and citizens grapple with the question individually. Still, the future security of these communities depends on all of these groups working together, taking a systems-based approach to building a more resilient future.
How to future-proof infrastructure is the question of this era, as communities across the country are being decimated by natural disasters. Fires in California earlier this year wiped out entire neighborhoods, while storms across the South and Midwest have uprooted towns in recent months. Every year, Florida and the Gulf Coast brace for increasingly volatile storms that batter the coastline and cost the state millions. More than 5,800 homes were totally displaced in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
