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Environmental Science and Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci
Building urban resilience and knowledge co-production in the face of
weather hazards: flash floods in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area (Mexico)
Ismael Aguilar-Barajas
a,⁎
, Nicholas P. Sisto
b
, Aldo I. Ramirez
c
, Víctor Magaña-Rueda
d
a
Departamento de Economia and Centro del Agua para America Latina y el Caribe, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
b
CISE (Centro de Investigaciones Socioeconómicas), Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico
c
Departamento de Tecnologias Sostenibles y Civil and Centro del Agua para América Latina y el Caribe, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
d
Instituto de Geografia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
urban resilience
knowledge co-production
floods
Monterrey
Mexico
ABSTRACT
In 2010, flash floods triggered by Hurricane Alex caused fifteen fatalities in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area
(MMA). In contrast, an estimated 225 people died in the 1988 Hurricane Gilbert disaster and reputedly, over
5,000 in the historical flood of 1909. The magnitude of hurricane-related impacts thus appears to be decreasing,
indicating higher resilience to this hazard. This paper analyses the process of building resilience to flash floods in
the MMA over the last several decades. Knowledge co-production plays a significant role in that process, par-
ticularly through the Nuevo Leon State Reconstruction Council, the multi-institutional, public-private-civil group
of stakeholders established to guide and coordinate reconstruction efforts following the Hurricane Alex disaster.
Findings reveal a complex, protracted and incremental resilience building process, conditioned by the nature of
the hazard (infrequent but liable to cause significant damages) and contingent upon the city’s socioeconomic and
institutional local context. This local context is embedded in a highly fragmented national water governance
architecture that lacks inter-institutional co-ordination and has limited the city’s adaptive responses. Despite
definite gains in building resilience, the city faces challenges notably in terms of the conservation and continuing
development of knowledge co-produced in the aftermath of disasters.
1. Introduction
Urban population growth - 6.5 billion people will live in urban areas
by 2050 (UN, 2014) - and concomitant social, economic, environmental
and political pressures, pose major challenges for the management of
increasingly larger and more complex urban systems (Editorial note,
Environ. Sci. Policy, 2016). A key challenge is to foster resilience, de-
fined (at a minimum) as the ability of an urban system to maintain or
rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance. Cities
face a variety of hazards of consequence within and beyond their own
boundaries, for example floods that damage their infrastructure but also
affect the wider economy (Pant et al., 2018). This is in part why
building urban resilience is arguably of vital necessity (Sharifiand
Yamagata, 2014).
Urban resilience as a concept is amenable to different disciplinary
perspectives and may be applied to a variety of distinct hazards or
groups of hazards (Meerow et al., 2016). Building resilience, however,
ultimately requires designing and implementing solutions on the basis
of available knowledge. This introduces a close connection between
urban resilience and knowledge co-production (in brief, the process by
which multifaceted knowledge for tackling complex problems is colla-
boratively constructed by stakeholders). Knowledge co-production
likewise is not a simple concept and is open to different interpretations
and normative prescriptions (Muñoz-Erickson et al. 2017).
The link between knowledge co-production and urban resilience has
not been fully appreciated in the resilience literature, or the actual
practice of building resilience. This paper proposes to shed some light
on the varied ways this link is key to building urban resilience. To this
end, the paper offers an in-depth analysis of an actual case of building
urban resilience and knowledge co-production in the face of hurricane
induced flooding, a hazard that triggers a specific type of disaster: in-
frequent (once in a generation), rapid onset, impossible to forecast at
more than a few days’notice, and liable to cause significant damage to
life, property and infrastructure. Specifically, the paper analyzes how
the Monterrey Metropolitan Area (MMA) - Mexico’s third most popu-
lous urban area - has built up resilience to flash floods over time,
through a thick and detailed description of the different historical,
political and economic dimensions of resilience building and
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2019.05.021
Received 19 August 2018; Received in revised form 19 May 2019; Accepted 23 May 2019
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: iaguilar@tec.mx (I. Aguilar-Barajas).
Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
Available online 29 May 2019
1462-9011/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
T
knowledge co-production in that city over the past several decades. The
evidence reveals a complex resilience building process: protracted, in-
cremental, contingent on the city’s internal context as well the external
context in which the city is embedded, and conditioned by the nature of
the hazard and stakeholder’s perception of the risk it poses. Moreover,
knowledge co-production shows its own complexities. In particular,
there is no guarantee that knowledge co-produced can be sustained, as
it depends crucially on local social capital as well as the wider national
governance architecture.
From this case study, three key messages emerge. First, for me-
tropolises like Monterrey that contribute significantly to their national
economy, increasing their urban resilience to floods clearly is a matter
of national interest. Second, the case of the MMA illustrates that in-
creasing urban resilience is an achievable goal; moreover, the process is
comprehensible although its complex nature precludes simple ex-
planations (and hence, easy replication elsewhere). Third, beyond the
five basic questions of resilience for whom, what, when, where and why
(Meerow et al., 2016) lie three major ones, which are often not dealt
with in the literature or in practice: how, at what cost and who finances.
How is resilience achieved? For example, what is the appropriate
combination of hard infrastructure (e.g. flood control dams) and soft
infrastructure (e.g. land use regulations)? How do we make sure
knowledge co-produced in a resilience building process is sustained
over time? How do we equip stakeholders with a proper understanding
of risk, so that they come to perceive both the costs (flood damages) and
benefits (water supply) of hurricanes? Finally, how much should be
spent on resilience and who pays? Answers to the last question must
involve all levels of government and society, including the private
sector.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2describes the
study area and the flood hazard it faces. Section 3presents the con-
ceptual framework and the methodologies employed. Section 4and
Section 5respectively address urban resilience up to and following the
most recent 2010 flash flood disaster. Section 6contains conclusions,
with the major lessons learned and the way forward.
2. The city, the region and the hazard
2.1. The city and the San Juan River Basin
The Monterrey Metropolitan Area (MMA) congregates 12 munici-
palities including Monterrey, the capital of the state of Nuevo León.
Located in the San Juan River basin (a sub-basin of the Rio Bravo/Río
Grande which straddles the border with the United States), the MMA
draws half of its water supply from three downstream reservoirs: El
Cuchillo, Cerro Prieto and La Boca (Fig. 1). Mexico has exclusive rights
over the San Juan River Basin waters according to the 1944 Interna-
tional Water Treaty with its northern neighbor. The metropolis of 4.5
million people is a major national economic hub and the birthplace of
several of Mexico’s largest industrial and financial companies. The
MMA’s water services authority, Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Mon-
terrey (SADM) is a pioneering organization: it is one of the few in the
developing world that provides drinking-quality tap water twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week, and treats 100% of its wastewater
(Aguilar-Barajas et al. 2015). Water governance in Mexico, however, is
fragmented and limited by significant inter-institutional coordination
problems (Aguilar-Barajas et al., 2016;Torregrosa et al., 2015;OECD,
2013c).
2.2. The hazard: moderate recurrent flooding, disastrous but infrequent
flash floods
The MMA receives only 600 mm of rain per year on average and
local creeks and rivers usually run dry or carry only minimal flows.
Nonetheless, every 3 or 4 years intense rain showers of 100 mm or more
within a 24 -h period (sometimes associated with named tropical
storms, e.g. Ingrid in 2013) do occur (Fig. 2). These downpours in-
variably overwhelm the city’s storm drainage system and cause loca-
lized, short duration problems particularly to transit.
The MMA’s distance from the nearest coast (about 200 km) protects
it from the direct onslaught of hurricanes, but its location at the foot of
the Sierra Madre Oriental range exposes it to a significant flash flood
hazard. Powerful hurricane remnants from the Gulf of Mexico occa-
sionally reach the region and discharge large amounts of precipitation
within a short period of time over critical catchment areas in the
mountains high above the city. Three to four times per century, these
events result in sudden and profuse surface flows notably in the Santa
Catarina River (Fig. 2), the MMA’s principal watercourse which crosses
the whole urban area west to east.
2.3. Major flooding events: a brief historical summary
Monterrey has a long history of flood-related disasters since its
foundation over 400 years ago. The great flood of 1909 remains the
worst catastrophe in the city’s history: the Santa Catarina River burst its
banks and an estimated 5,000 people lost their lives (Graham, 1911). In
1938, floods curtailed transit across large swathes of the city (El Por-
venir, 29 August 1938). Hurricane Beulah in 1967 caused flooding but
relatively minor damages. With Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, the Santa
Catarina River again broke its banks and attained its highest-ever re-
corded flow (CONAGUA, 2018). An estimated 225 lives were lost and
the flood caused severe damages to bridges, roads and other infra-
structure, disrupting transit not just locally but regionally (Bitrán,
2001;OECD, 2013b,Benavides and Lozano, 2013). Structures built on
the river’s margins (mostly private homes) and on the river bed itself
(recreational and commercial outfits) were swept away, revealing loose
land use regulations and enforcement (Chávez Gutiérrez, 1995;Salazar,
2008;de León Gómez, 2009).
Hurricane Alex in 2010, one of the strongest storms to ever impact
Nuevo León and the MMA, generated torrential rains in the city. The
river reached its second highest recorded flow (CONAGUA, 2018)-
Fig. 3 provides a view of the Santa Catarina River on the day of the
event. Damages - although not as severe as the previous Gilbert disaster
- significantly affected the MMA (Sisto and Ramírez-Orozco, 2015) and
resonated widely in Mexico given the city’s weight in the national
economy (OECD, 2013b). 15 people lost their lives, more than 12
thousand were rescued or evacuated and over 68 thousand households
required emergency help (food, water, cleaning supplies and materials).
Around 148 thousand homes were left without power and close to 400
thousand homes (about 1.7 million residents, i.e. 37% of total MMA
population) lost access to water services (SADM, 2010a;SADM, 2010b).
The event caused extensive and severe damages to public infra-
structure: 7.8 million square meters of pavement washed away, 154
culverts obliterated, 100 bridges damaged or ruined, 54 km of piped
water lines and 45 km of sewerage lines wiped out, 1,502 schools and
211 health clinics affected at various levels (CERNL, 2013). Of en-
ormous relevance for large sectors of the population were the transit
restrictions, traffic congestion and extended daily commutes that per-
sisted for several months; reduced mobility impacted more than 3,700
firms (OECD, 2013b). No consensus on the monetary value of damages
has been reached: estimates vary between 1.35 and slightly over 2
billion dollars (OECD, 2013b). A significant portion of damages to
private property occurred on land officially classified as unfit for urban
development, notably on the margins of rivers and creeks (Leal Diaz,
2012;CERNL, 2013;Barragan, 2013). In the sparsely populated upper
reaches of the Santa Catarina river basin, significant erosion and some
landslides (in part due to deforestation) resulted in a great accumula-
tion of sediments downstream in the city and beyond.
3. Conceptual framework
Building urban resilience to a hazard implies a complex process,
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
38
conditioned by stakeholders’perception of the risk involved and cru-
cially dependent on their capacity to co-produce and sustain the
knowledge required for the design and implementation of solutions.
3.1. Urban resilience
Urban resilience as a concept is amenable to different disciplinary
perspectives to address a diversity of distinct hazards affecting complex
urban systems (Meerow et al., 2016). In its simplest form, urban resi-
lience refers to the ability of an urban system to maintain or rapidly
return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance. This involves
short-term coping as well as long-term adaptation (Sharifiand
Yamagata, 2014).
Urban resilience encompasses numerous and interrelated social,
economic, institutional and political dimensions: “…enacting urban
resilience is inevitably a contested process in which diverse stake-
holders are involved and their motivation, power-dynamics, and trade-
offs play out across spatial and temporal scales”(Meerow et al., 2016).
From that standpoint, “soft”socio-political infrastructure may be as
relevant as “hard”physical infrastructure (Eakin et al. 2017).
Fig. 1. Monterrey Metropolitan Area and San Juan River Basin (Northeast Mexico).
Fig. 2. Peak flow (Santa Catarina River) and
maximum precipitation within 24 hours
(MMA), 1947-2016.
Source: Authors’, with observational data from
CONAGUA (2018). Precipitation data was ob-
tained from the Monterrey Rain Gauge. Max-
imum discharge data for 1947-1988 is from the
(now defunct) Monterrey Gauging Station; for
1989-2016, from the Cadereyta Gauging Sta-
tion.
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
39
Urban resilience viewed as a dynamic, socio-ecological process,
does not necessarily require a system to return to its initial equilibrium
state following a disturbance (Frommer, 2013;Barata-Salgueiro and
Erkip, 2014). The ability to bounce back to a desirable state requires the
timely recovery of basic structures and crucial functions (Meerow et al.,
2016). This depends on communities’access to resources and their
organizational capacities prior to and during the occurrence of a dis-
turbance (UNISDR, 2015;UNISDR, 2017;Hallegatte et al., 2018). The
emergence of innovative measures also plays a role (Miller et al., 2018).
The dynamic nature of urban resilience implies that policy responses
often derive from an interrelated set of decisions, in a decision cycle
where factors that shape initial decisions affect further decisions (Wise
et al., 2014).
Urban resilience analysis and policy design require a comprehensive
understanding of cities as complex adaptive spatial systems (Bourne
and Simmons, 1978;Friedman, 2002;Ernstson et al., 2010). Depending
on their configuration, urban systems will show distinct capacities for
coping in the short term and adapting and improving in the long term.
For instance, integrated flood management must link water and land
use planning (WMO, 2009). Addressing the two as separate or rival
issues will lead to inappropriate urban development (infrastructure and
human settlements on land at risk of flooding) and thus increase ex-
posure to risk. This issue is of particular significance in metropolitan
areas where multiple jurisdictions often overlap.
3.2. Adaptive risk management
Urban resilience is directly related to stakeholders´ perception of
risk and their behavior in the face of risk. There is a growing recogni-
tion that adaptive management must address risk explicitly and ap-
propriately (WMO, 2009;UNESCO, 2012;UN, 2013;OECD, 2013a)to
inform decision-making based on an understanding of the environment
in which risks and opportunities emerge (World Bank, 2013). The
World Economic Forum places extreme weather events, natural dis-
asters and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation in the
top 5 of the Global Risks Landscape (WEF, 2019). The Forum also
highlights the interconnectedness between these risks and their im-
pacts, for example the risk of a water crisis and consequent disruptions
to critical infrastructure and basic services.
Land reserved for flood risk management is an emerging topic for
urban resilience. In 2018, the Journal of Flood Risk Management (Vol.
11) published a special issue on this (https://doi.org/dx.doi.org/10.
1111/jfr3.12344) and the first issue of the International Water
Resources Association´s Policy Brief series focusses on this theme
(Hartman and Stavikova, 2018). This Brief proposes that a compre-
hensive basin-wide approach is necessary in order to integrate three
scales of flood storage strategies: in the catchment; upstream of cities;
and, in the cities themselves. Since in all three cases affected land is
often privately owned, flood risk management should be closely linked
to land management, paying special attention to the issue of jurisdic-
tion.
Adaptive risk management requires inclusive consultation and
communication with stakeholders. The public needs to be better in-
formed but also more educated about the implications of risk-based
policy scenarios (Aguilar-Barajas et al., 2015). It is not uncommon for
people to ignore or be unaware of the risks they face; the combination
of inadequate knowledge and unfortunate choices leads to the occur-
rence of disasters (Miller et al., 2018). From a psychological perspec-
tive, the likelihood of future hurricanes tends to be underestimated, the
experience of past ones may be forgotten, but the impacts of an im-
minent hurricane tend to be overestimated (Shaw, 2005). People need
to become “…more aware, less comfortable, and hence more reflective
about how we intervene, in word or deed, in the changing order of
things”(Jasanoff, 2010). There is thus a direct connection between
urban resilience, risk and knowledge.
3.3. Knowledge co-production
The design of effective resilience policies that take risk into account
require multifaceted knowledge collaboratively constructed by stake-
holders (Hallegatte et al., 2018). This is referred to as knowledge co-
production and is essentially the result of a social process: “…knowl-
edge making and decision making are social activities that take place
within social contexts, institutions, communities…” (Miller et al. 2010).
Consequently, knowledge co-production for urban resilience is open to
different interpretations and normative prescriptions (Muñoz-Erickson
et al. 2017).
In principle, there is a beneficial role for collaboration between the
scientific community, government and civil society in the co-identifi-
cation of problems, the production of knowledge and its application
(Sarewitz and Pielke, 2007;Muñoz-Erickson et al. 2017). Co-production
of knowledge however is a costly activity and does not occur sponta-
neously (Jasanoff, 2010). There are several competing models of
knowledge-making and governance but trusting relationships need to
Fig. 3. Santa Catarina River during Hurricane Alex (July 1
st
, 2010).
Source: realidadrxpuesta.org. (http://www.realidadexpuesta.org/2010/07/llena-huracan-alex-el-rio-santa.html). Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
40
be constructed and fostered (Frantzeskaki and Kabisch, 2016). The in-
terrelated issues of legitimacy-credibility are also linked to both science
and policy making (Miller et al. 2010).
In the wake of a disaster, reconstruction offers multiple and rich
opportunities to deploy more resilient alternatives and new models of
institutional design (Miller et al. 2018). Reconstruction should focus on
future resilience and be inclusive, but it cannot substitute for sound
prevention and preparedness measures - institutional, technical and
financial capacities are crucial in this regard (Hallegatte et al., 2018).
Knowledge for prevention is key for urban resilience policy.
4. Building urban resilience in the MMA: from Hurricane Gilbert
(1988) to Hurricane Alex (2010)
Building resilience to floods has taken place in Monterrey since its
beginnings, including the wholesale relocation of the original settle-
ment hundreds of years ago. For reasons of space and availability of
evidence, our analysis focusses on the post-Gilbert period. In the
aftermath of that disaster, a notable process of resilience building began
at both the local and national levels. State and local authorities un-
dertook the construction of major preventive engineering works: a
regulating dam upstream from the city (the Rompe Picos Dam) to
dampen peak flows in the Santa Catarina River and within the city, an
improved network of storm drains. At the national level and in the
countrywide context of extreme weather hazards (in particular, tropical
storms), federal authorities developed an early-warning system.
4.1. The Rompe Picos Dam (2002-2004)
The Rompe Picos Dam, located 22 kilometers upstream of the MMA
in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range (Fig. 4) was built to reg-
ulate flows in the Santa Catarina River. The dam (which presents a
number of advanced technical features) was designed for a return
period of 10,000 years (i.e. the probability of an event surpassing the
dam’s capacity is only 0.01% per year); it controls about two-thirds of
overall flows in the river’s upper catchment area (Ramírez, 2011).
The Nuevo León State Government under Governor Sócrates Rizzo
first proposed the project in 1994 –six years after the Gilbert disaster.
Construction only began in 2002 at the end of the Fernando Canales/
beginning of the Fernando Elizondo administrations, and concluded in
2004 at the beginning of the Natividad González administration. It took
therefore 16 years and four distinct state governors for the project to
materialize after the 1988 disaster (Flores Longoria and Maldonado,
2009;Aguilar-Barajas et al., 2015).
Since its inauguration the dam has proved effective on several oc-
casions. The first test came in 2005 with Hurricane Emily: despite co-
pious precipitations of 250 mm, peak flow in the river did not surpass
600 m
3
/s (Fig. 2) and impacts in the city were modest (Salas and
Jimenez, 2014). Neither of the following two named storms (Dean in
2007 and Dolly in 2008) produced any significant peak flows or da-
mages. With Hurricane Alex in 2010 the Rompe Picos dam fulfilled its
original purpose: it reduced the peak flow by at least 750 m
3
/s and
prevented flooding in downtown Monterrey and immediate surround-
ings (Ramírez, 2011; Benavides y Lozano, 2013). Without the dam,
peak flow in the Santa Catarina River probably would have equaled or
even exceeded the 4,400 m
3
/s registered during the Gilbert event 22
years earlier (Ramírez, 2011;Leal Diaz, 2012). Fig. 5 presents an aerial
view of the dam (facing downstream), the day after the Alex event.
4.2. The Storm Drains Project (2002-2009)
Insufficient and deficient infrastructure to collect and evacuate
runofffrom even moderate storms had frequently created transit havoc
in many parts of the MMA (Barragan, 2008;Flores Longoria and
Fig. 4. Geographical location of the Rompe Picos Regulating Dam.
Source: Authors´.
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
41
Maldonado, 2009;Leal Diaz 2012). Towards the end of the 1990s, the
abundant and critical reporting on the issue (the influential local
newspaper El Norte played a significant role in this) reflected a wide-
spread grievance among Monterrey’s residents (Canales Clariond, 2011;
Leal Diaz, 2012). This set the stage for a solution involving several state
actors: the Storm Drains Project.
The Project initiated in the context of a very restrictive legal, fi-
nancial and political environment (Canales Clariond, 2011;Aguilar-
Barajas et al., 2015). The responsibility for storm runoffmanagement at
the time rested with the State government (Secretariat of Urban De-
velopment and Public Works) and the metropolitan municipalities, but
none of these entities had the technical know-how or financial re-
sources to solve the issue. The state (and metropolitan) water and
sewerage authority (Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey, SADM)
however did possess the required resources. In 2000 the state congress
changed SADM’s statutes to allow it to take on the Project and use its
own revenues to finance the enterprise.
In 2002, SADM personnel had identified 420 points across the city
at risk of flooding from runoff(SADM, 2019). Between 2002 and 2009
about 200kms of main and secondary drain collectors were laid (Fig. 6),
reducing by 90-93% the risk of flooding in the city’s most exposed lo-
cations (SADM, 2019; Benavides y Lozano, 2013). The equivalent of
USD250 million was spent in the process, 80% from SADM’s internal
funds and the rest paid for by the federal government. Around 1.2
million people directly or indirectly benefited from the storm drainage
project (Flores Longoria and Maldonado, 2009).
In 2007, a new state congress reversed the previous administration’s
initiative and devolved responsibility for storm runoffmanagement to
the state government and metropolitan municipalities. The decision
effectively left the MMA without an integral program to handle storm
water and signaled a major step backward in the matter (Barragan,
2013). Such a reversal illustrates clearly the difficulties in building
resilience (Aguilar-Barajas et al. 2015) and the non-linearity of the
public decision-making process (also identified in the case of Mexico
City, see Tellman et al., 2018).
4.3. The national early warning system (1999-2000)
At the time of the Hurricane Gilbert disaster, early warning
capabilities were incipient in Mexico. At 22:40 on September 16 1987
the first official bulletin about the storm was emitted; at three o’clock in
the morning of the following day, State Governor Treviño got a call to
inform him the storm had reached the city (Benavides y Lozano, 2013).
Clearly, there was no opportunity to prepare for the contingency.
Between 1999 and 2000 the federal government’s National Agency
for Civil Protection, with the collaboration of various universities and
research institutions, developed and implemented Mexico’sfirst in-
tegrated system to deal with meteorological hazards: the Tropical
Cyclone Early Warning System (TC-EWS). The TC-EWS was designed to
monitor the position and intensity of hurricanes as well as coordinate
emergency procedures at the federal, state and municipal level. The
basic goals of the system were to have people move out of the path of
dangerous storms in advance (a day or two) from vulnerable locations
to safer ones, as well as to put in place emergency supplies and mate-
rials where potentially needed. In this way, recovery after the impact of
a tropical cyclone would be simpler and shorter, improving the resi-
lience of communities. Following the implementation of the TC-EWS
nationwide, the number of fatalities associated with tropical cyclones in
Mexico diminished dramatically, by one or two orders of magnitude
(Magaña et al., 2014)
In 2010 several days before the Alex event ample and continuously
updated information about the storm was being made available.
Between 18:00 on June 25 and 23:00 on July 1, 53 notices on the Alex
Hurricane and 13 warnings for likely affected locations were emitted
(CERNL, 2013). This time the city was not taken by surprise and pre-
ventive civil protection measures, including evacuation of residents in
exposed locations and emergency transit restrictions, were put in place
in a timely fashion. The relatively low count of fatalities from Hurricane
Alex certainly can be attributed to this.
The TC-EWS obviously did not emerge in direct response to the
Hurricane Gilbert disaster. Disasters of that nature had been a nation-
wide concern well before then, and continue to be –for example, more
than 100 people died when Hurricane Manuel hit the country’s Pacific
coast in 2013. In this case the MMA has gained resilience not through
its own volition but rather as a consequence of this external context.
Due to a number of modifications intended to make it more effi-
cient, in recent years the TC-EWS arguably has lost some effectiveness
(Magaña et al. 2014). The National Center for Disaster Prevention
Fig. 5. The Rompe Picos Dam one day after Hurricane Alex (2 July, 2010).
Source: Courtesy from the National Water Commission.
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
42
(CENAPRED) is developing a new, more sophisticated version of the
system. The main feature of that new version will be a focus on risk and
not solely the characteristics of the hazard.
4.4. Water governance before Hurricane Alex
Prior to the Alex disaster, water governance in Mexico and the MMA
did not evolve significantly: it remained fragmented between the three
levels of government (federal, state and municipal) and dysfunctional
due to the lack of coordination between these actors (Aguilar-Barajas
et al., 2016). Meanwhile urban development proceeded with little to no
regard for the region’s hydrological reality. In particular, this had led to
the obstruction or alteration of natural channels and the occupation of
land exposed to flooding despite federal regulations prohibiting its use
(Leal Diaz, 2012). Fig. 7 reveals, for example, how in one section of the
Santa Catarina River, the width of the channel had been dramatically
reduced from 275 m to 165 m by residential development and recrea-
tional and commercial activities. This aerial view was captured on May
13, 2009, slightly over a year before Hurricane Alex. It is noteworthy to
consider that official state-level development plans at the time
(Gobierno Constitucional del Estado de Nuevo León, 2010a) did not
refer to the concept of risk management in the face of weather hazards.
Moreover, the draft of the state’sfirst Risk Atlas (Gobierno
Constitucional del Estado de Nuevo León, 2010b) was still under review
months after the Alex event.
5. Knowledge co-production and urban resilience in the aftermath
of Hurricane Alex
With Hurricane Alex, the MMA to an extent demonstrated an in-
creased resilience to floods, in the wake of the resilience building
process undertaken after the 1988 Gilbert disaster. The regulating dam
upstream from the city, the expanded network of storm drains within
the city and enhanced early warning capacities and civil protection
protocols, all worked to significantly limit the impacts of the 2010
storm (Flores Longoria and Maldonado, 2009;SADM, 2010b;Leal Diaz,
2012;Benavides and Lozano, 2013; and CERNL 2013). The Alex dis-
aster nonetheless revealed a significant level of social and economic
vulnerability (OECD, 2013b) and in its aftermath, a new round of re-
silience building initiated.
5.1. The immediate reaction to Alex
The immediate reaction to the Alex disaster illustrated well the
city’s store of technical capabilities. Piped water offers a case in point.
As mentioned earlier, about 1.7 million inhabitants were left without
the service (about 37% of total population). Within three days 85% of
the MMA’s population had access to the service which was fully re-
established within 15 days; at the end of July, tap water was safe to
drink again (SADM, 2010a;SADM, 2010b). Repairing the city’s ser-
iously damaged water infrastructure required concerted efforts on the
part of the water and sewer authority; for several weeks, crews totaling
2,200 workers using 300 vehicles worked around the clock. During that
time, SADM regularly emitted press communiques to inform the public
on the progress being made. Another example of rapid rebound was
offered by schools: despite many installations having been damaged,
children started classes in August on time after their summer holidays
(CERNL, 2013).
In parallel with immediate recovery initiatives, the city promptly
embarked on a collective and innovative process of collaboration
among numerous institutions and sectors of society, to develop solu-
tions to the substantial challenges posed by the damages from the flood.
Just three weeks after the disaster, the Nuevo León State Reconstruction
Council (CERNL) was formally established.
5.2. Reconstruction: the Nuevo León State Reconstruction Council (2010-
2013)
5.2.1. The Council’s architecture and operation
The Council brought together stakeholders from the three levels of
Fig. 6. Storm water infrastructure in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area, 2019.
Source: Adapted from authors, based on a map produced by SADM.
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
43
government as well as civil society, mainly from the city’s powerful
business sector and main universities and research centers. The state
government tasked the Council with guiding and coordinating all re-
construction efforts. Ten work committees were created to handle a
wide range of issues: 1) Design and management of a Reconstruction
Master Plan and Information System; 2) Financing and transparency; 3)
Meteorological risks and water works; 4) Logistics, roadways and mo-
bility; 5) Educational infrastructure; 6) Housing and urban planning; 7)
Aid for vulnerable households; 8) Economic recovery; 9) Health; and,
10) Communications. Each committee was to interact with several
federal, state and municipal departments and agencies (CERNL, 2013).
The Council soon faced face coordination challenges (CERNL,
2013). In the Mexican context, such problems are not uncommon and
derive from the country’s fragmented water governance architecture
(Aguilar-Barajas, 2016; Torregrosa et al., 2015; OCDE, 2013c). Co-
ordination among the three levels of governments itself proved difficult
and the process surrounding the financing and contracting of public
works, convoluted. In particular, access to funds from the FONDEN
(Fondo Nacional de Desastres Naturales), a federal entity created in 1996
to provide financial help to states and municipalities affected by natural
disasters (OECD, 2013b), was sluggish.
The following illustrates the previous points. When SADM com-
pleted the reconstruction of the water and sewerage infrastructure af-
fected by the storm, it could not proceed and carry out maintenance
work on the Rompe Picos Dam because of the poor state of the access
road (CERNL, 2013). The federal communications and transport min-
istry, responsible for the rehabilitation of that access road, could not
begin work as FONDEN had not released the required funds. The same
ministry also complained that reinforcing riverbanks was being made
difficult by the lack of progress on the part of the federal water au-
thority as well as the Nuevo León sustainable development secretariat.
Meanwhile, work on rectifying the course of the Santa Catarina River
came to a halt when engineers realized that the data made available by
the federal statistical agency (INEGI) did not meet the spatial resolution
requirements previously established (Ramírez, 2011). In order to pro-
ceed, new data had to be generated through reconnaissance flights over
the river, which had not been originally planned or budgeted for.
5.2.2. Results
The reconstruction of transport infrastructure proceeded gradually,
as damages to the city’s two main east-west arteries that follow the
course of the river (Constitución on the north bank and Morones Prieto on
the south bank), as well as bridges over the river connecting the north
and south sides of the city, were extensive. These arteries are funda-
mental for mobility in the MMA and also play an important economic
role in the regional transport network linking the MMA to national
markets and Texas. Reconstruction of these arteries and bridges natu-
rally constituted one of the main and most important tasks of the
Council.
The new infrastructure put in place, offered significant improve-
ments over what the flood had destroyed in terms functionality, capa-
city and robustness to withstand future floods (Sisto and Ramírez-
Orozco, 2015); for example, elevated bridges replaced the old culverts
that had been washed away. Nonetheless, it later became apparent that
the two rebuilt arteries lacked sufficient storm drains: in 2013, large
pools of water formed in several sections when Hurricane Ingrid
dumped copious amounts of rain over the city. State authorities ad-
mitted the flaw present in the new infrastructure but argued that the
reconstruction budget had not permitted to do more. Since then, people
have come to expect water problems on the new roads whenever it rains
hard.
In July 2013, three years after the Alex event, the Council disbanded
after presenting its final report –cited here as CERNL (2013). That
document reported 5,523 actions completed (99.5% of the list of ac-
tions contemplated initially) and estimated total reconstruction ex-
penses at 16.9 billion pesos (approximately USD$1.3 billion). In terms
of funding, 62% originated from federal sources and 38% from state
sources. In terms of spending, 28% of expenses were exercised by fed-
eral authorities - nearly all of this went to hydraulic works –and 72%
were exercised by state authorities. In that case, nearly all was spent on
road works and urban infrastructure; less than 5% of state authorities’
expenses went to education, housing, health and the environment.
Reconstruction expenses amounted to 1.83% of the 2010 state Gross
Domestic Product (OECD, 2013b)–note that more than 90% of the
state’s economic activity takes place in the MMA. The considerable
sums involved motivated many instances of rivalry, bickering, or worse.
For the duration of the reconstruction period, the state and federal
Fig. 7. Obstruction of the Río Santa Catarina channel (aerial view, May 13, 2009).
Source: Authors’, with data from Google Earth.
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
44
administrations belonged to two distinct, antagonistic political parties.
Roadside billboards proliferated at reconstruction sites to inform mo-
torists and passers-by which authority (state or federal) was in charge.
In the rush to deliver projects, norms and rules (technical, legal and
financial) were violated, in some cases leading up to abuse and cor-
ruption (Leal Diaz, 2012).
The reconstruction process nonetheless proved successful overall
and fairly rapid. This achievement can be credited in part to the work of
the reconstruction Council but also to the general social environment
that characterizes the MMA. Monterrey has a history of entrepreneur-
ship, innovation and public-private collaboration. This has enabled the
city to overcome the multiple challenges described earlier, beginning
with the Council’s creation and operation. Monterrey’s experience il-
lustrates well the complex nature of building urban resilience: multiple,
varied stakeholders engaged in a web of intricate (and sometimes
contradictory) relationships within a rich multi-layered context, with
outcomes that do not lend themselves to simple explanations.
5.3. Legacy: the Council’s main recommendations
Knowledge produced within the Council was presented in a sys-
tematic and ordered fashion in its final report. The main takeaways in
terms of recommendations for increasing resilience to floods consisted
in: to build an additional regulating dam in the upper Santa Catarina
River Basin to complement the existing Rompe Picos Dam (arguably,
two or more additional dams would be of use); to relocate people living
in areas at risk of inundation and impede their return (i.e. to enforce
existing federal land use laws); to reform and simplify existing regula-
tions on the operations of FONDEN as well as procedures for public
works contracts (i.e. to cut red tape); and to reforest the upper basin of
the Santa Catarina River to limit runoffdownstream and into the city.
The MMA Water Fund created for that specific purpose, which gathered
stakeholders from government, the private sector, academia and civil
society in general, has been working systematically on this issue. In
2016 the Fund purchased 1,200 hectares of land for reforestation in the
upper basin and currently in 2018, is in the process of acquiring an
additional 1,000 hectares.
Towards the end of its mandate, the Council at the invitation of the
state government participated in the creation of a new state Strategic
Planning law. A new council for Strategic Planning was also estab-
lished. The purpose of that civil-governmental body was to craft de-
velopment policies and monitor their application. Out of this came out
the state’sfirst Strategic Plan for 2015-2030 (CNLPE, 2015). This Plan
surprisingly barely mentions risks from weather hazards such as hur-
ricanes and makes no reference to the knowledge produced during the
years of the Council’s operation. This illustrates that knowledge about
building urban resilience does not simply accumulate over time and
may even be lost.
The city to this day still faces significant risk from large storms of
the Gilbert or Alex category. Fig. 8 presents areas in the city’s down-
town currently classified at risk of flooding from urban runoff(dots)
and from the river overflowing (light shaded areas), considering a re-
turn period of 1,000 years. Clearly the process of building resilience has
not reached completion, but more than eight years after the Alex dis-
aster, complacency appears to be taking hold.
6. Conclusions: lessons learned and the way forward
The MMA has built a degree of resilience to floods through a com-
plex process - drawn out, incremental and non-linear. This process has
been conditioned in part by the nature of the hazard the city faces: the
infrequency of catastrophic floods has shaped stakeholders’perception
of the risk, fostering complacency and adversely affecting risk man-
agement decisions. The 16-year delay after the 1988 Hurricane Gilbert
disaster in implementing the city’s foremost element of preventive re-
silience infrastructure - the upstream regulating dam - is a clear
expression of this. So is the absence, more than 8 years after the 2010
Hurricane Alex disaster, of a plan to build the additional regulating dam
recommended by the Nuevo León State Reconstruction Council in 2013.
The previous exemplifies how some of the knowledge co-produced
in the wake of the 2010 disaster seems to have been, if not lost, at least
temporarily forgotten. How to ensure the conservation and continued
development of this knowledge raises important questions. At a
minimum, this should be an explicit objective of a permanent state
development strategy. The experience of the Council may be of great
value in this regard, especially the institutionalization of its major re-
commendations. The continuous updating of the Risk Atlas is another
example of what could be done.
The city’s cultural and socioeconomic context has abetted its resi-
lience building process. The immediate reaction to the 2010 disaster
revealed the city’s capacity to quickly recover essential functions fol-
lowing a major disturbance and the prompt creation of the Council, its
ability to innovate. The relatively rapid and effective reconstruction of
the city and the significant work of the Council during that period also
reflected that local context - examples of effective multi-stakeholder
working groups in Mexico such as the Council are to say the least, not
common. Monterrey’s tradition of industry, commerce, higher educa-
tion and cooperation between the business community and local au-
thorities, has produced an environment that has enabled resilience
building. Nonetheless, the institutional capital and knowledge built up
in the aftermath the disaster have begun to dissipate to an extent. Most
of the recommendations formulated by the reconstruction Council have
not translated into concrete action, with the exception of the proposal
to reforest the upper Santa Catarina River basin. The MMA Water Fund
(FAMM) currently undertaking reforestation work upstream from the
city is a notable example of the MMA’s currently dampened but con-
tinuing resilience building process.
The wider external political and administrative context in which the
city is embedded has made varied contributions. On the one hand, the
weak national water governance architecture (understood as the whole
social apparatus through which decisions are made) has hampered the
coordination of stakeholders’actions in the aftermath of the 2010 dis-
aster and limited the extent of improvements to infrastructure. On the
other hand, the national early warning system implemented after
Hurricane Gilbert saved dozens of lives in the city in the 2010 disaster.
Monterrey has also benefited from the federal government’sfinancial
contribution to reconstruction –a sound investment for the country as a
whole given the city’s strategic importance for the Mexican economy.
The MMA’s history of damages from storms shows that more than
“natural disasters”these events are the consequences of inadequate
prevention, poor land use planning and insufficient resilience (Leal
Diaz, 2012;Zuñiga and Magaña, 2018). In the Mexican context, urban
land use patterns are the result of complex social, economic, institu-
tional and political processes involving a multiplicity of actors, at times
antagonistic. The current legal framework where federal regulations
prohibit development on riverbanks but local authorities manage their
own urban development plans and administer construction permits
does not help, but the solution to this conundrum requires more than
simple regulatory changes. Appropriate mechanisms for effective en-
forcement of existing regulations are needed. Political rivals must rea-
lize that urban resilience is a necessity that transcends any particular
agenda, and collaborate towards finding solutions. The public at large
also bears responsibility: people need to appreciate the rationale for
land use regulations and act accordingly.
Torrential rains and floods pose obvious risks for the MMA but also
present significant benefits. In the region’s relatively dry climate, ex-
ceptional rains help replenish reservoirs and aquifers that provide water
to the city. For example, in mid-2013 after a prolonged dry spell re-
serves in the MMA’s three reservoirs reached below 20% of their
combined capacity; the city was on the brink of a water crisis when
Hurricane Ingrid fortuitously appeared to replenish reserves (Sisto et al.
2016). In a future where the MMA has reached a high level of resilience
I. Aguilar-Barajas, et al. Environmental Science and Policy 99 (2019) 37–47
45
to storms and hurricanes, these should come to be perceived as bene-
ficial. Resilience and water security are in this way intimately linked for
the MMA and stakeholders will need to refine their perception of risk
and risk management with a view “…to mitigate the losses and improve
the benefits that people experience when they face risk and opportu-
nity…” (World Bank, 2013). This shift in perception would require, first
and foremost, educating stakeholders on the multifaceted issues in-
volved and the advantages of preventive, integral risk management
over a reactive, emergency-based approach. This shared knowledge and
understanding would facilitate the building and sustaining of a social
consensus on policy, including the necessity of adopting a broad urban-
regional system scale that links explicitly urban resilience to flash
floods with water supply security. Informed risk-taking, including the
analysis of the consequences of making or not making a given decision,
should be the guiding policy principle.
Ultimately, this speaks to policy by design as proposed in Bobrow and
Dryzek (1987). The concept implies a strong and wide shared knowl-
edge base - which often includes contending frames of reference –and a
deep relationship between policy and politics. Policy by design relates
directly to a given policy context. Viewed in this light the specificities of
the MMA discussed in this paper must matter a great deal in the crafting
of future urban resilience policy. A proper understanding of adaptive
risk management should be at the heart of this design.
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