The Way Forward for a Systems Approach

Some follow-on thoughts on advancing resilience engineering to solve problems such as flood-induced catastrophes

Background:
Katrina devastated homes, business and lives to a historic and unprecedented (black swan) extent
Corps evaluation team (finds) that flood works were a system in name only and recommends future be approached as comprehensive systems
Corp implements a 12 action effort headed by a systems approach
12 actions turns into a campaign plan which expunges the word and intent of a systems approach
Recovery actions by Corps follow same old fragmentation by project funding with no visible integration efforts. Also appear to omit stakeholder focus and life cycle risk management
Corps adopts Adaptive Management practices from ecology community to achieve the effect of comprehensive systems - safety and resilience are not central. Corps (and state) claim they follow all system practices with no validation and evidence
Recommendations
Other distinguished organizations continue to advocate a national commission such as was used for 9/11. It hasn't happened and probably won't and certainly won't get combined with Deepwater Horizon spill although both were (probably) caused by systems in name only conditions.
I suggest demanding the Corps perform an in flight, world class peer review to asses if the the solution emerging from the Corps' recovery work, is a system in more than just name. The peer review should confirm the correctness of and adherence to the IPET's assessment and the result 12 action for change created by the Corps. The peer review would report both its findings and recommendations for doing the right thing the right way.
The peer review team should include the views from proven water safety programs such as Holland and Germany. The review team should also include relevant disciplines include systems engineering and resilience engineering rather than just narrowly focused civil engineers and hydrologists. The review team should also include members of key stakeholder classes such as residents as well as local, state and federal preparedness, response and recovery.
The scope of the peer review should address a total water safety perspective including the full range of non-structural measures
Adaptive Management includes some best practices such as experimentation but I see as omitting some of the key best practices to insure that the deliver results are and remain a resilient system. Ecosystem-oriented methods don't have an adequate focus on the criticality of human life.
The literature on resilient systems is adequate to establish a baseline "checklist" to begin assessing safety-critial systems capabillity. The peer review team would be expected to make significant contributions to sustaining more resilient public infrastructure.
The peer review might be expected to find and address some serious clashes between science and politics in the water safety arena. This might include legislative prohibitions on redundancy as a resilience mechanism. It might also see if their are self-defeating clashes between the visions for safety and growth. The team might also consider the use of stakeholder risk communications to help action-ably assess any residual risk that might not be infeasible or un-affordable to address.
To paraphrase Harry Shearer, "The Corps showed me the Lake Borne works and I said they're certainly big. Now it's time to bring in smarter engineers."

Off soap box, KC

I keep having to remind myself that in New Orleans we are considered to have a levee which means that resilience (or lack there of) isn't even considered. Levees are viewed as a binary condition - there or not there. The factor considered for flood plain risk determination is actually rain inside the levees. Makes it easy to calculate but doesn't communicate the real risk. Besides, de-certifying levees is a political quagmire once more pitting growth against safety.