Christopher Burgess | Kingston’s Friday flood: Building resilience

On September 19, Kingston’s urban corridors and transport hubs uptown were flooded in just ninety minutes of intense rain, and resulted in probably over a billion dollars in damages. Flooding in Kingston due to aged and shoddy infrastructure works is a longstanding problem. In the words of reggae artiste Dwight “Bushman” Marvin in 2010:

Downtown nuh love when rain ah fall, uptown flood out

Eight Million dem spend pon Hope Road, and di flooding nuh end

The National Works Agency’s 2011 drainage plan identified over twelve priority areas in Kingston, but only three were addressed. Meanwhile, the city has grown denser, with new apartments piling more pressure on the drainage system.

The timing of that flood was symbolic. As engineers gathered for the last evening of Jamaica Institution of Engineers’ Annual Conference, the venue flooded, and vehicles floated away near-by. The storm was a test that Kingston failed. We must pivot to meet climate-related hazards, with information, upgrades and pragmatism.

CLIMATE-RESILIENCE PLANNING

Resilience begins with knowledge. Kingston’s drainage information is scattered across studies, and the science is clear. Climate change projections show storm intensities increasing by 20–50 per cent, while our drains are already undersized by two to sixfold. Without upgrades, damages will multiply exponentially.

What Kingston needs is a living drainage master plan – an inventory of culverts, inlets, and gullies at the street level to guide new development projects. Today, no one can say with certainty where all these assets are, what their capacities are, or whether they can withstand cloudbursts. Prioritizing investments requires flood models built on this inventory, linked to socio-economic data. After all, its people, property and commerce that matter most.

Other countries and cities, from Guyana, to New Delhi, in India to Australia, publish their drainage master plans and invite public feedback. Why isn’t the NWA making this information public to empower citizens and businesses? Transparency is the first step toward accountability.

FOCUS ON THE FLOOD-PRONE AREAS

Flood-prone areas along Kingston’s transport corridors, logistics hub and residential districts are well known and were confirmed by the 2011 drainage master plan. Of the twelve projects identified, the three that were implemented include parts of Constant Spring Road, Hagley Park Road and the Duhaney Park culvert. Kingston cannot fix everything at once, but government should address the most disruptive flood-prone areas, that exert the greatest social and economic costs.

Priority must be the commuter and commercial hubs – New Kingston’s business district, Half-Way Tree, Barbican, Constant Spring Road and Cross Roads – where flooding halts transport, damages property, and disrupts billions in economic activity. Upgrading culverts, inlets, and major gullies in these areas should be first in line. Flooding in these areas can disrupts over 200,000 commuters. Most of the issues in these areas are longstanding.

East Kings House Road flooding that has been well known since 2009 and just requires lifting the road over the flood levels. But why was it not done with the recent 2019 road upgrades? Where was the independent technical oversight? Upgrading these corridors with an improved Mona Road Channel, Kings House Gully, expanded pipe culvert networks on Hope Road and Constant Spring Road would require US$60–85 million but would protect billions in annual economic activity, and grow the economic pie larger to fund additional works.

The second tier of interventions should target the logistics and industrial belt of Newport West and Marcus Garvey Drive, where repeated flooding cripples warehouses and supply chains and leave commuters heading to Portmore stranded. Each day over 150,000 commuters use this major arterial road. Annual losses were estimated by NWA to be in the order of US$17 million. Each year this leg of the toll road contributes over US$25 million, based on the Annual Financial reports, to the toll road’s cash flow, meanwhile the logistics sector contributes over US$125 million to the country’s GDP. What is needed is for the harbour outfalls, the Tinson Pen channel, and Newport West crossings to be enlarged at an estimated cost of US$50–75 million. This is clearly economically viable to address these longstanding issues that well known from the 1980s.

Socially vulnerable districts – mid-town, Greenwich Town, New Haven and Spanish Town Road – must be addressed. Targeted upgrades to Jews and Shoemaker gullies here, that need to be three to four times larger, could safeguard more than 100,000 residents. Some gullies need frequent desilting like the Tivoli, South Camp Road and Barnes gullies. Upgrades here, costing an estimated US$35–40 million, would deliver relief to over some of Kingston’s most vulnerable populations.

Prioritization means sequencing projects by risk and return: protect the economic arteries that keep the city moving, while also securing the communities that suffer most when Kingston floods. Implementing these investments would make Kingston resilient to cloudbursts.

NOWCASTING WITH AI

Last month’s storm was at the lower end of what meteorologists call a “cloudburst”. If Kingston struggled with 90-millimetre in an hour, imagine a storm triple that intensity – the kind Copenhagen faced in 2011. Copenhagen redesigned streets as “cloudburst boulevards”, created retention parks, and improved drains. Roads can double as safe flow corridors, if “nowcasting”, that is the ability to predict extreme weather a few hours in advance, is integrated into flood management.

Building resilience is more than building concrete drains and inlets. New Delhi and Beijing use real-time radar and satellite imagery for “nowcasting” – issuing billboards and SMS warnings hours before storms arrive. Jamaica, through a World Bank loan, invested in a doppler weather radar and twenty-six automatic weather stations in 2019, at a cost of US$5 million. So why isn’t the new doppler radar working effectively provide warnings about intense weather in advance? And why are Kingston’s rain gauge sensors so few and far between? Only one sensor partially captured some of the cloudburst intensities, during that Friday’s event. These sensors are relatively cheap and provide invaluable information. Private sensors were invaluable in showing the intensity of the storm, where the public sensors failed. The question is unavoidable: why aren’t taxpayers getting value for money for the investment in the radar three years later? Information is the cheapest form of resilience.

Building resilience will require getting Met Service radar fully operational to provide AI-driven “nowcasts” that analyse radar and satellite imagery and rainfall gauge data. Both the India Meteorological Department and Japan Meteorological Agency use AI-enhanced radar to predict severe weather hours ahead. Cutting ribbons on new roads is always attractive. But it only makes sense to invest billions of dollars in road works, if the investment is sustainable and capable of withstanding the severe weather we are currently experiencing. After all, the strength of the road below the surface is only as good as the drainage on top. We must be guided by the science and invest in the Meteorological Service capacity so they can lead us into the future with “cloudbursts”.

Last month’s storm was a test that Kingston failed. Failed to forewarn commuters about and failed to handle. But we can pivot to climate-resilient master planning, implementation of the long-delayed drainage upgrades, and AI-driven nowcasting targeted at the city’s most flood-prone areas.

Climate resilience is not free, but neither is neglect of implementation of critical infrastructure. Flooded warehouses, stranded commuters, wrecked cars, and lost business hours already cost billions each year. Every dollar spent on prevention saves many more in avoided damage and distress.

Christopher Burgess, PhD, is a registered civil engineer, land developer and managing director of CEAC Outsourcing, owners of SMARTHomes Jamaica. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com