Resist, Delay, Store, and Discharge

If you are a consulting firm with a coastal engineering practice or a marine contractor, you need to be thinking in terms of helping your clients with resist, delay, store, and discharge (RDSD).  Coastal communities will be in need of comprehensive water strategies.  RDSD will deploy hard infrastructure (resist), slow stormwater runoff (delay), green infrastructure for excess stormwater (store), and pumping systems to support drainage and defense (discharge).  RDSD needs to be combined with public policies and practices associated with greater infrastructure and community resiliency.  RDSD should support day-to-day long-term sustainability practices and disaster events.  Under both scenarios, the end result must be preservation of social, economic, and environmental resources with the reduction of infrastructure.  Engineers need to become much more comfortable with multi-faceted design solutions while contractors need to be thinking innovation in terms of cheaper, faster, and better project delivery in a RDSD world.