D.U.N.E Defender (Drainage Under Natural Environment Defender) Patents Coastal Resiliency Protection System
New Green Infrastructure System combines the best of Natural Defenses with a Man-Made Drainage and Pedestrian Access System to protect coastlines, wetlands and riverine environments.
- (1888PressRelease) January 25, 2022 - Global Integrated Assets, LLC (“GIA”) announced today that it had achieved patent protection for its green infrastructure system, D.U.N.E. Defender (Drainage Under Natural Environment Defender) to provide omni channel shoreline protection from sea-level rise, storm surge and other flooding events. D.U.N.E. Defender adds another arrow in the climate resiliency defense quiver for governments, communities, corporations and homeowners. The D.U.N.E. Defender System combines and enhances natural shoreline defenses like sand dunes, marshes, river banks, etc. with an innovative modified pre-cast concrete drainage structure. The structure enhances the natural defenses and provides pedestrian access in an aesthetically pleasing way.
Billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure, homes and commercial properties is focusing attention on resiliency planning. In the United States in 2021 alone, there were twenty meteorological events that accounted for over $1 billion in damage, each. Natural defenses like dunes and marshes have provided protection for millennia, but these more intense storms are proving that even Mother Nature needs assistance. Additionally, the US Census Bureau estimates that 29% of the US population lives within coastline counties with 28.7% of businesses also operating within those counties, putting many people, businesses and infrastructure at risk from flooding events.
D.U.N.E. Defender will:
• Utilize precast concrete drainage culverts modified to include drainage inlets along their top side;
• Be integrated into the dune or other natural defenses to be unobtrusive to the environment;
• Be topped by a pedestrian boardwalk providing access to a coastline in an aesthetically pleasing way;
• The culvert will be integrated into the natural environments to hide it from view while still allowing floodwaters that overtop the natural environment to drain to the interior of the culvert;
• The floodwaters will be directed to planned holding areas or redirected out to the body of water from which they came.
Edmond (“Ed”) Prins, AIA, CEO of GIA said, “Being of Dutch descent, I witnessed first-hand how the people of the Netherlands have successfully battled the North Sea utilizing innovative infrastructure and the protection of natural defenses.” He continued, “D.U.N.E. Defender is designed to combine the best of both worlds, modifying concrete culverts to allow for drainage of flooding waters that overtop any natural environments and combining them with natural defenses to produce more effective protection for all manner of shorelines.”
D.U.N.E. Defender is the culmination of several years of research and design. Prins said, “My background in architecture and real estate development allowed me to look at utilizing existing combinations of man-made structures in new and innovative ways that would help mitigate the effects of these enhanced events.” Up until now most products like steel and concrete seawalls, stone groins and jetties have been used extensively but are not visually unobtrusive, sometimes block access, or in many cases, do not truly provide environmentally effective protection from flooding events.
D.U.N.E. Defender is the first of several new resiliency focused products in the development stage. With storms more intense and more frequent, these products including D.U.N.E. Defender will aid governments, communities, businesses and homeowners to be resilient and mitigate the huge financial losses and human impacts from these flooding events.
Global Integrated Assets, LLC
Global Integrated Assets (“GIA”) is a global management consulting firm committed to partnering with business and governmental leaders to address their challenges and develop and implement strategic solutions that have operational, financial and social impact from owned and leased fixed assets. GIA’s strategic solutions transform the way these organizations work, creating change and value for all of their stakeholders. Visualizing a fully integrated organization, GIA’s solutions create agile, resilient and sustainable changes that will also contribute to ESG initiatives by understanding the interdependencies between an organization’s people, place and business ecosystem.
Edmond “Ed” Prins, AIA, Founder and Principal of Global Integrated Assets is an architect and urban planner by education and a life-long corporate asset integrator who has provided financially-driven Integrated Asset solutions to over 40 of the Fortune 1000 C-Suites. Throughout his career, he has created bottom line returns of over $1.6 billion through the creation and implementation of these Integrated Asset solutions, which have produced enhanced transactions, operational improvements, sustainability, and resiliency results.
Edmond “Ed” Prins
CEO
561-445-9476
ed.prins ( @ ) globalintegratedassets dot com
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