Photo by Julia Godinez
Editor’s Note: As part of our “Special Edition” Series, we are highlighting the work produced by students who participated in the January 2020 Infrastructure Policy, Management and Finance Practicum which focused on infrastructure resiliency in Puerto Rico.
Infrastructure Policy, Management and Finance (IPMF) Fellowship
The attached white paper is authored by a group of students who participated in a Winter Term field practicum in Puerto Rico in 2020 as part of a certificate program called the Infrastructure Policy, Management and Finance (IPMF) Fellowship. This certificate program provides students with specific knowledge and tools for working in the infrastructure space in planning, finance, project management, and/or operations role post-graduation.
One of the requirements of the IPMF certificate is an extracurricular engagement related to infrastructure. To facilitate this experience, the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs sponsors a Winter term field practicum. This practicum provides students with the opportunity to engage with a real-world infrastructure problem or challenge. Prior practicums have included Brooklyn–Queens Connector streetcar (2017), Air Service in the Southern Tier of New York State (2018), and Broadband Accessibility through public schools in Puerto Rico (2019).
White Paper (Attached below)
A team of Cornell graduate students in the fields of public administration and regional planning spent a week in Puerto Rico in January 2020 with the objective of understanding what infrastructure resiliency means in a practical and actionable sense. The large question we wanted to answer was, how is Puerto Rico using resiliency as a design and investment objective in the rebuilding of the Island’s utility infrastructure after a series of natural disasters? The answer to this question was the basis for a set of recommendations at the end of this paper.
The attached paper contains several parts; the first a review of infrastructure resiliency concepts and practices, the second is a synthesis of the team’s observations about how resiliency is being incorporated into Puerto Rico’s rebuilding plans, and the last is a suggested approach to achieve the objective of resiliency in a more effective manner.
Acknowledgments:
Participants in the 2020 IPMF Practicum Cohort and contributors to this white paper were: Victor Benito (CIPA ‘21), Andreea Barb (CIPA ‘21), Angel Benitez Collante (CIPA ‘21), Anjali Fisher (CRP ‘21), Julia Godinez (CIPA ‘21), Kara Guse (CIPA ‘21), Ankur Gupta (CIPA ‘20), Zai Liu (CIPA ‘20), Alekhya Mukkavilli (CRP ‘21), Ryan Sequeira (MPS ’20) and Mahrusah Zahin (CIPA ‘20).
White Paper: Infrastructure Resiliency in the Context of Puerto Rico
