Resilience assessments have been proposed to aid the management of complex critical infrastructure systems in the face of the evolving risks and uncertainties associated with climate change and other threats and hazards. We synthesized the experiences of the Panama Canal. seaports that have undertaken resilience assessments using a qualitative research approach. Through survey and interview responses from Panama Maritime Authorities seaport decision-makers, the following results were obtained:
We found that resilience assessments provide a suite of co- benefits beyond identifying vulnerabilities in infrastructure and management systems. Among these co-benefits were enhanced social capital between the port organization and its internal and external stakeholders as a result of the collaborative processes that resilience assessments require.
Unlike the benefits, challenges associated with resilience assessments were often case specific, though several overarching challenges should be expected by organizers of future resilience assessments. For example, engaging stakeholders in various phases of the assessment stymied processes such as selecting sea level rise projections to plan for or getting consensus on what resilience means for their seaport. Communicating vulnerabilities that were discovered through the resilience assessment was also a challenge for decision- makers who were concerned about how such information would impact the seaport’s marketability to potential tenants and investors.
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While the most commonly mentioned benefit was the enhanced vulnerability information, some informants acknowledged the limitations of the information their resilience assessments provided. Some seaports completed their interventions over five years ago, when, as several informants mentioned, the science for certain climate hazards was less accurate and available as more recently. Informants from three focus groups felt that the lack of accurate, locally relevant climate hazard data (e.g., sea level rise projections) limited their seaports’ abilities to identify and plan for those respectively hazards (four mentions; four informants).
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Several informants noted how the resilience assessments that their seaports undertook were different than conventional planning procedures, for example, because of the larger time horizons considered or the integration of numerous stakeholder groups. Informants from two case studies expressed the difficulty of organizing a planning process with which they had little experience and that had no model
to reference, as a challenge (three mentions; three informants). In the opinion of one informant,
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An unanticipated challenge mentioned in two focus group interviews was communicating the vulnerability assessment results in a manner that would not harm the seaports’ marketability to future lessees and investors (two mentions; two informants). Informants that mentioned this challenge felt that disclosing information about their seaports’ vulnerabilities to external stakeholder groups may deter investment into their lands. For one informant’s seaport,
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It is difficult to glean insights from the survey results. The insignificant difference between
implemented resilience enhancement typologies may suggest that resilience enhancement strategies are too case-specific for cross-seaport comparisons. The inability of most informants to indicate whether implementation was likely in the absence of the resilience assessment, may indicate a weakness in the survey instrument to address the sought inquiry—the question may have been too speculative for informants. One potential explanation of why construction and design strategies were most frequently mentioned and implemented, is that infrastructure improvements and modifications are going to be pursued regardless of climate change. Without functional infrastructure, the seaport’s capacity to facilitate the transfer of cargo is compromised; thus, having resilient infrastructure is merely complementary to the seaport’s mission.
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