Tacloban, March 4 2014 — The second follow-up mission by the ARCADIS in partnership with UN-Habitat presented ideas for the rehabilitation of Tacloban City to the City Government. The presentation was a result of fieldwork and consultations with the city.

The team saw the need to provide appropriate coastal protection to the city, and proposed different protection measures for the various sections of the coast: soft dunes for the south, a hard levee for the airport area, a raised bay boulevard for the built up mid-section, and a mangrove forest for the north.

In terms of urban planning, the team proposed strategies for various areas of the city, anchored on the principle that business development and employment drives spatial development. The downtown was proposed to be revitalized by retaining it as a historic core, and developing the harbour for fishing and tourism while also encouraging expansion to safer areas through the development of a new central business district further inland, and a new employment zone in the north.

The Tacloban City Government with the support of UN-Habitat will be using the results of the mission as inputs for the Tacloban City Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan.

See related article: Second planning charette held for Tacloban’s Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan

In addition to ARCADIS’ engagement in Tacloban, they also returned to Guiuan to address water supply, coastal protection, and the proposed permanent settlement site.

With the objective of establishing and mapping Guiuan’s sensitivity to extreme events, ARCADIS illustrated the impacts of Haiyan using a numerical model that simulates the supertyphoon, tracking varying wind and pressure fields over time and space. To further improve on the initial results of the simulation, ARCADIS conducted a coastal scan along the Leyte Gulf, from Tubabao down to Sulangan. The refined results would help in mapping Guiuan’s overall vulnerability to increasingly powerful typhoons and other hazards, and would serve as inputs to the review and updating of the municipality’s Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plan.

Apart from the coastal scan, ARCADIS also looked into the rehabilitation of water lines, with more detailed assessment and sample costing, and further zoomed into the LGU’s proposed permanent settlement site in Barangay Tagporo, assessing several options for water pipe routing.