Concrete based coastal and marine infrastructure (CMI) such as ports, piers, industrial facilities and coastal defense elements dominate coastal zones world-wide.
Warlords fought over every port, fishing pier and telephone pole that could turn a profit.
"They're troublemakers," a young spear fisherman told me one morning at Kauai's Port Allen pier.
Tourists can rent a yacht to go sport fishing from the old port's pier.
After completing his initial work to establish communications systems for various organizations, including providing wireless (WiFi) coverage of the Port-au-Prince main port and pier area with high end Cisco equipment allowing all workers to finally connect to the Internet, Brian and his NPS team decided not to accept the status quo.
Boat traffic was somewhat more normal yesterday in Boston Harbor, which was closed on Sunday while the Coast Guard swept the port and piers for bombs.
Expressions of interest in the container port, at Piers 9 to 11 in South Brooklyn, are not binding but would let officials judge the economic viability of maritime activities there.
Red Hook is a former commercial port where piers and parks with harbor views compete for your favor with cool old industrial buildings and charming brick row houses that share blocks with grungy industrial buildings, vacant lots and the city incarnation of ramshackle shacks.
But here's the gist: When getting an army and/or its supplies off of ships and onto land, you generally need big chunks of fixed infrastructure - like ports and piers.
At the port, the northern pier had been shaken to pieces, and its cranes had toppled into the bay.
An airport hobbled by only one suitable runway, a ruined port whose main pier splintered into the ocean, roads blocked by rubble, widespread fuel shortages and a lack of drivers to move the aid into the city are compounding the problems.
