Arcadis hired to design flood protection plan for New York City hospitals, USA
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has selected Dutch consultancy firm Arcadis to provide damage assessments, flood protection planning and sustainable design services to help these facilities better weather the next severe storm.
When Superstorm Sandy pummeled the East Coast last October, much of Lower Manhattan was flooded including three of the HHC's member hospitals -- Bellevue, Coney Island and the Coler Campus.
Bellevue Hospital was forced to manually evacuate hundreds of patients due to the loss of power and other utility services. All three of these facilities suffered extensive and crippling damage.
Inspection of the basement of the Bellevue hospital after it had been flooded when Sandy hit New York.
Flood protection plan
Under the 5 million USD contract, Arcadis will perform flood proofing and hazard mitigation planning to make these critical facilities more resilient in the face of future storms.
The firm will also provide consulting, preliminary design, pre-construction, construction and post-construction services at the discretion of the HHC.
Hydrodynamic modelling
Using proprietary hydrodynamic modeling, ARCADIS can examine how future storms may impact the hospitals and accordingly design multiple layers of defense to strengthen them against flooding so hospital staff can focus on providing continual essential services to their patients even during severe weather events.
Sustainable design recommendations
"As major storms like Sandy occur more frequently, hospitals and other critical service providers in our coastal communities will face flood risk management decisions," said Gary Coates, CEO of the US operations of Arcadis. "Using our Dutch flood proofing expertise in combination with our construction management experience in the healthcare sector, we are well positioned to deliver flood protection and sustainable design recommendations to the HHC."
About Arcadis
Arcadis is a leading global engineering and consultancy firm, providing consultancy, design, engineering and management services in infrastructure, water, environment and buildings. With 22,000 people and 2.5 billion eiro in revenues, the company has an extensive global network supported by strong local market positions.
This news item was originally published on the website of Arcadis.
More information
Arcadis
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
+31 20 2011 011
www.arcadis.com
Evacuation of the Bellevue hospital, New York on 31 October after failure of the back up generators.