Resilience of environment, infrastructure, communities, and governance in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and the need for community empowerment to develop decentralized, nature-based solutions to sustainability.

Collapse of electric and water infrastructure throughout Puerto Rico with Hurricane Maria is well documented but assessment of interactions among environment, infrastructure, and society is lacking. A classification system is developed to assess the resilience of each component based on principles of ecosystem responses to long-term and unexpected environmental change. All infrastructure sectors have experienced long-term decline because of a patch and stabilize approach that excludes strengthen and innovate.