Brian Crawford

Facilitator: Brian Crawford, University of Rhode Island: brian@crc.uri.edu.

Contact: Brian Crawford, University of Rhode Island: brian@crc.uri.edu.

Brian Crawford Program Director Coastal Resources Center University of Rhode Island ia@rc.u.du

Brian Crawford

Associate Coastal Manager

University of Rhode Island

Brian Crawford of the University of Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Center described the tsunami's overall impact on Thailand this way: "It would be like the East Coast of the United States being struck by a wall of water 10 meters high from Florida to Maine."
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Crawford and Rubinoff are part of a team of United States and Thai scientists, educators, community specialists and civil servants who are using the most modern equipment and methods -- from computers to satellites to rumble-detecting buoys -- to help the rural villages of Kamphuan through another disaster, whether it be a tsunmai, monsoon, typhoon or mudslide.
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In effect, USAID said, "Instead of just building it back to the way it was, can we build it back better," said Crawford, the program director for the URI/USAID partnership.
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But, said Crawford, "There have been absolutely no problems whatsoever.
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"If you want to restructure people's lives, you have to pay attention to the fishing industry," Crawford said."That area is overfished -- too many boats and too many fishermen."

The team is looking at the tsunami as an opportunity to move the villagers to more sustainable fishing, telling them, as Crawford put it, "You need to be careful because if you over-fish it's less income per fisherman."
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The villagers "don't have to exit fisheries," Crawford said, "but they need to be less dependent on fisheries."

Team members use one word over and over again as they describe the project: resiliency.

"We're developing a 'tool box' for coastal community resiliency," Crawford said.