Cyclone Gabrielle - The infrastructure flaws exposed in our major cities
The furious storms over the summer have served to expose a number of weaknesses in the infrastructure of our major cities and towns.
Speaking to The Front Page podcast amid the onslaught of ex-cyclone Gabrielle on the North Island, NZ Herald science and environmental writer Jamie Morton says there are three key areas we need to focus on to prepare our cities for the future.
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“We’re having to look at making $120- to $180-billion worth of upgrades just to bring them up to scratch to deal with the pressure and demand that we’re going to get with increasing extreme rainfall events.”
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This feeds into the debate of how you prepare your city to deal with the increased downpours that will inevitably result from the warming climate. The final recommendation that Morton makes is that we rethink some of the building choices we have made up until now.
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