The next presentation of the Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN) Green Infrastructure, Climate, and Cities Seminar Series will be held on Wednesday, November 5th at 4pm at Drexel University. A webinar option will also be provided.
Space is limited, so please RSVP for both in-person and webinar attendance at http://www.ccrun.org/seminars
Green Infrastructure and Coastal Resilience
Adrian Benepe and Philip Orton
The topic for this session is green infrastructure and the urban coast, discussing the current state of natural hazard resilience and climate change adaptation. Hurricane Sandy caused coastal flooding in Northern New Jersey and New York City that exceeded any levels reached in over three hundred years of the region’s history. Philip Orton will place Sandy’s flood heights in the context of historically increasing storm tides and sea levels and will demonstrate how he is using hydrodynamic modeling to examine the efficacy of nature-based and vertical barrier based approaches. In response to resilience and adaptation, Adrian Benepe will discuss the benefits of storm water capture provided by natural green infrastructure and on wetland preservation. Adrian will focus on parks as green infrastructure, concentrating on The Trust for Public Land’s work around the country.
Adrian Benepe
A senior vice president and director of city park development for The Trust for Public Land, Adrian Benepe is one of the nation’s experts on the nexus of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors in public-space development and management. Adrian served as New York City Park Commissioner for 11 years under Mayor Michael Bloomberg prior to joining The Trust for Public Land. During that time he oversaw a major expansion of the city’s park system, including restoring historic parks such as Central Park and Battery Park, adding 730 acres of new parkland including Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the High Line, and laying the groundwork for an additional 2,000 acres of parkland within the city. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Middlebury College and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he was awarded a Pulitzer Fellowship.
Philip Orton
Dr. Philip Orton is a research assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, and specializes in coastal physical oceanography and storm surges. He holds a PhD in physical oceanography from Columbia University and a MS in marine science from the University of South Carolina. He has published over twenty articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as three op-eds on climate change, coastal ecosystem health and coastal flooding in The New York Times, one in the Sunday Edition. He is a technical team member of the NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), and recently worked on NYC’s Special Initiative on Rebuilding and Resilience after Sandy, using a storm surge model to quantify the influence of adaptation strategies on coastal flooding. His other research interests include air-sea interaction, marine and coastal meteorology, turbulent mixing, sediment transport, carbon dioxide and ocean acidification, and relationships between ecosystem.
