Engineering Matters

#376 Sandy’s Left Turn: Building a Resilient Manhattan

Engineering Matters

Show Notes

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy turned sharply west and drove a storm surge into New York Harbor. Lower Manhattan flooded, a substation failed leaving more than 220,000 people without power, and damage across the wider region reached $65–70 billion.

Protecting the Lower East Side from the next storm means threading flood walls, berms and deployable gates through one of the densest parts of the city. Defences sit above generations of utilities: sewers, water mains, power and telecommunications infrastructure. Works also had to avoid separating communities, while ensuring access to city parks and the waterfront.

Engineering capacity is stretched by modern demands, and extreme weather poses increasing risks. Engineers need new approaches that enable them to evaluate and test more options, more quickly and effectively than ever before. Artificial intelligence, digital twins, and open data approaches provide the tools to do just that.

These technologies can reduce tasks such as floodgate analysis from 30 hours to just 30 minutes. Across the infrastructure lifecycle, digital advancements are boosting efficiency and improving outcomes, transforming once cost-prohibitive concepts into the resilient infrastructure systems that society depends on.

Guests

Roni Deitz, Global Director for Climate Adaptation, Arcadis

Gregg Herrin, Vice President for Water, Bentley Systems

Resources

To read more about the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, click here

Watch the floodgates in action here

Partner

Around the world, infrastructure professionals rely on software from Bentley Systems to help them design, build, and operate better and more resilient infrastructure for transportation, water, energy, cities, and more. Founded in 1984 by engineers for engineers, Bentley is the partner of choice for engineering firms and owner-operators worldwide, with software that spans engineering disciplines, industry sectors, and all phases of the infrastructure lifecycle.

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