ReS.T.O.R.E. – A Resilient Community Design
Date: 3/25/2017
Author: Galen Newman, Community Resilience Discovery Lead
Dr. Galen Newman, The Community Resilience Discovery lead, along with graduate student Zixu Qiao and undergraduate students Alaina Parker, Molly Morkovsky, Phillip Hammond, Maritza Sanchez, & Claudia Pool, have won two statewide TX-ASLA Honor Awards. There work was title “Climate Change Armor.”
To account for sea level rise and the increasing risks of natural disasters, they utilized a 97-acre site on Robinson Bayou in League City, Texas, as a location for forward-thinking resilient design strategy development. League City, one of the fastest growing cities in Texas, is forecasted to triple in population by 2040. North League City is an environmentally sensitive region in Galveston County where wetlands are diminishing, there is increased saltwater intrusion and hurricane storm surges can reach up to 12 feet. Under developmental conditions that threaten existing ecologies and climatic conditions which threaten future development, the aim of our resilient design was to allow existing nature processes to serve as flood attenuation mechanisms to protect human and nonhuman populations.
The concept was to intervene on stormwater issues at their Source through Treatment, Omission, Remediation, and Enhancement (ReS.T.O.R.E.). Treatment of environmental hazards through natural detention and bioswales improves the quality of natural resources on-site, softens the impact of new development and acts as a saturation ground for future flood hazards.
These ReS.T.O.R.E. design system projects to increase the site’s rainfall saturation by nearly 70%, decreasing future flood risk significantly and improving site water retention. Despite the additionally added urban land cover, runoff is offset to 3% less in the final phase with intensive low impact facilities strategically placed throughout the design.
Details about this project will be presented by Graduate Student Zixu Qiao during our March 21st, 2017 Institute’s meeting