Dr. William Fritz, CSI's interim president, led a group that formed in June and predicted what to expect if a giant storm ever hit at high tide with a huge surge of sea water.
"A week before we were to make our presentation, we had an actual event happen that was very, very close to the 'what-if' model that we had put together," said Dr. Fritz, who is a geologist, about the power of Hurricane Sandy.
So attention ought to be paid to Dr. Fritz and his CSI colleagues who are now using the school's High-Performance Computing Center to determine how to lessen the impact of future storms on the coastline of Staten Island.
According to Dr. Fritz, rezoning must bring new building restrictions for low-lying areas that were once marshes or streams before years of reckless construction during the 20th century.
"This way, when they flood, there is less cost to human life, property and the economy," Dr. Fritz said.
He's right: We cannot afford unlimited rebuilding without a plan to do so wisely. That's why a task force, made up of officials and members of the community who know Staten Island, is so critical to the rebuilding effort here.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Dr. Alan Benimoff, engineering science and physics professor, followed up the previous CSI study by plotting the location of every house that was damaged by the storm.
He compared the results with a 1901 map. It was found that outside the immediate shoreline, the damage clustered around locations that used to be tidal marshland or stream beds.
Those locations were haphazardly filled in over the decades "with asphalt and concrete and roads and houses and roofs and things," Dr. Benimoff pointed out.
It would be beyond foolhardy, to say the least, to ignore or dismiss this timely CSI research that so accurately predicted the destructive impact of Hurricane Sandy.
The computer model took into account millions of data points, including the contours of the sea floor, the roughness of the water and the geography of the coastline.
Now Dr. Michael E. Kress, CSI vice president for technology systems, wants to plug even more information into the computers to see how best to protect Staten Island.
Rebuilding coastal dune fields and protecting current marshes that sponge up water are vital, says Dr. Fritz.
He suggests that patchwork rezoning of vulnerable areas to make them non-residential can be effective.
"Even if you protect 50 percent of the area, that's 50 percent lower rebuilding costs and loss of life when the next hurricane happens," says Dr. Fritz.
He says surging sea water is the biggest danger.
"The flooding from the rain comes up very, very slowly," Dr. Fritz noted. "When a flood is from a storm surge, it comes up so fast you can't get out of the basement."
As we know all too well, that phenomenon tragically cost some people their lives on Staten Island and in other coastal communities in our region.
The experts at CSI warn that another storm surge is bound to hit Staten Island at some point in the future; it's just a question of when.
Given their track record and painstaking research after Sandy, the experts at the College of Staten Island deserve to be taken seriously.
It would be perilous to do otherwise.