Contingency Plan

Hypothetical Scenario

The hypothetical scenario is to make a contingency plan for Grilstad Marina and the surrounding low altitude areas in order to withstand flooding due to sea level rise. The suggested rise in sea level by up to 3m is predicted to occur over the next 70 years, making it possible to create processes that can aid rescue and relief, create community networks and action groups that can support the residents with special needs, and also test a series of flexible spatial strategies incrementally that can be useful in creating resilience within the built form. However, the city does not have a Disaster Management Authority yet, and that must be the first step of the contingency plan. The Disaster Management Authority consists of several agencies with the power, capacity and resources to create required soft infrastructure and make scenario plans based on the information available.

Response strategy

Forming the Disaster Management Authority (DMA)

Disaster Management Authorities are formed with the primary responsibility to protect life, property and environment by establishing plans that respond to and recover from natural and man-made disasters (Department of Home Affairs, AU). The DMA comprises experts in various fields who have the capacity to make informed decisions and create plans to protect the local communities in the face of disaster and provide them with training to respond and recover from the crisis. The DMA does these tasks by:

Funding programmes and initiatives that prepare communities before the disaster, teach them ways to respond during the disaster and methods to recover post-disaster

Collaborating with communities and other groups, capacity building by conducting necessary training, sharing information and creating networks with other communities that are dealing with the same issues

Forming the Disaster Management Authority

Leadership: providing knowledge, awareness of new systems and trends in disaster management. DMA coordinates response at multiple levels of governance, devise policies for disaster risk reduction and create strategies contextual to vulnerable areas by using inclusive planning methods

In the case of Trondheim, the first step is to create the Disaster Management Authority. It would consist of experts from Trondheim Kommune, City Council, the NVE, Fire Department, the Civil Defense guard from governmental institutions. Representatives of institutions like St. Olav’s Hospital, NTNU will also be a part of the organization to provide support in logistics, sharing resources and provide assistance in ideation and planning. The public transport authority of Trondheim, AtB, will also be a part of the DMA to aid in rescue and relief planning.

After the formation of the DMA, the first steps will be to identify the stakeholders at the local level of the site in question, Grilstad. Identifying their strengths and weaknesses and spreading awareness about the risk and vulnerability of the area is important as most residents currently are unaware of these vulnerabilities.

The contingency plan will be made in three stages:

Short term: with the intent of i) Community building and awareness ii) Early warning systems iii) Identifying rescue areas and conducting rescue drills

Mid term: with the intent of testing nature based solutions and engaging the community in collective activities i) green areas for community activities ii) open space network with the capacity to hold water iii) flexible and incremental development of support infrastructure for flood protection

Long term: creating guidelines for such development by identifying practices that best suit the context. The proposal for the long term is a visualization of what could be possible. However, the actual possibilities may be different depending on the success or failures of the proposed short and mid term strategies.

The success of the long term vision may also need changes to the building codes and by-laws. This project does not delve into these aspects due to time constraints.