What forms can be emulated?

The Australian Great Barrier reef, thanks to the use of emergency resources for areas under restoration, is an excellent example of resilience. The reef is home to more than 400 types of corals and other species, and has been strongly impacted by climate change, in particular cyclones, and invasive foreign species. One of the visible effects has been their loss of colour through a process called bleaching, by which corals die. When a disaster hits the coral, its neighbours called refugia have three interesting behaviours:

First, it has been shown that these neighboring reefs are less likely to be flooded by warm water currents that cause bleaching.

Likewise, it has been shown that they are sufficiently connected to each other through water movement during the spawning phase of some organisms. This allows coral larvae to travel and colonize devastated areas to refill them.

Finally, these subsidiary reefs have been shown to be less likely to be infested by ““crown-of-thorns starfish”, which are known for their invasive characteristics. Instead, their larvae are capable of traveling to damaged reefs along with the coral larvae. 

This is a very good example of cooperation and resilience that can help us, for example, to design methods for disaster recovery. For this, we must understand the threats to a given system and which are the vulnerable spots to the given problems. During an emergency, what are the essential businesses that must operate in a city?In cases of flooding in a city, are there sufficiently high places? Bearing this in mind, we must generate a plan for its protection under different possible scenarios.

Source: AskNature. org, abstract by Mary Hoff.