Building the Resilient Infrastructure Needed for the Future

“The best way to survive the future is to build for it today.”

July 22, 2019 That was the key message delivered by Bill Larson, Vice-President of Marketing for CalPortland and Chair of the Building Resilience Coalition to delegates at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region Summit today in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Larson outlined the mission of the Building Resilience Coalition, the hosts of the Infrastructure Plenary at the Summit, noting that Coalition members are committed to furthering the planning, development, and construction of buildings and associated infrastructure that are better able to recover from and to adapt to the growing impacts of an ever-changing urban and physical environment.

Resilient infrastructure was the core them of speakers at the session, (“Building Infrastructure for the 21st Century” ) all representing ports, railways and commodity shippers vital to the trade and commerce of both Canada and the United States attending the PNWER Summit.

“Resilience is our middle name”, said Larson, “and resilience in the face of a rapidly changing global environment is critical to the preservation of our economic well-being”.

“We have built our cities and towns and associated systems of transportation that support our trade and commerce predicated on certain assumptions about climate-related risks. While the achievements we have made in building our railways, ports, and systems to move commodities such as grain and potash from Saskatchewan are staggering in their own rights, some of those risk-related expectations may now be out of date,” said Larson, echoing messages from the various panelists speaking at the Plenary session.

All panel members accepted the Building Resilience Coalition message that the future is indeed different and if we want to meet the new challenges that lie before us, we will have to build differently, build better, and build with more attention given to climate resiliency and rapid recovery from natural disasters.

Larson reminded Summit delegates to the message delivered last year at the PNWER Summit in Spokane Washington by Evan Reis, Executive Director of the U.S. Resiliency Council, the keynote speaker sponsored by the Coalition that “The difference between catastrophic devastation and manageable recovery following a disastrous event often can be traced back to decisions made decades earlier.”

Speaking also during the Coalition sponsored Plenary were leaders of some of the most important infrastructure systems in North America today, including:

·    Robin Silvester, Chief Executive Officer of the Port of Vancouver:

·    Jim Titsworth, General Director, Canadian Business Development, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway;

·    David Miller, Senior Manager, Public and Government Affairs, at CN Rail;

·    Vee Kachroo, Senior Vice President, Operations, at Canpotex;

·    Phil Lamarche, D­­irector of Transportation Operations, Federated Co-Operatives Limited; and

·    Washington State Representative and PNWER Vice President Gael Tarleton, who also serves as a Port of Seattle  Commissioner.

Moderating the panel was Jennifer Fox, Vice President, International Trade Policy & Canada Relations, NASCO, the North American Strategy for Competitiveness.

These leaders make the decisions that will shape the future of trade and commerce in North America, noted Larson, and to be sure climate resiliency is one of the key considerations in their long-range planning and forecasting.

The PNWER Summit took place July 21-25 this year and will be followed by a winter policy summit in Seattle Washington in November.

At that event, the Coalition will report out on its partnership with PNWER and the University of Victoria for the research and policy development program for the Road Map to Resilient, Ultra Low Energy, Zero Carbon Buildings by 2050.

More information on the PNWER Summit in Saskatoon is available here.\