Water Sector Resiliency with EPA’s Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT)

Climate change impacts pose both an immediate and long-term threat to the continuity of wastewater, stormwater, and drinking water (water sector) utility operations and water supplies. To help utilities reduce the risks associated with climate-related hazards, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU) initiative provides a collaborative technical assistance program, online tools, and trainings designed to build resilience and adaptive capacity in the water sector.

EPA’s Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT) was designed in consultation with a representatives from drinking water and wastewater utilities, water sector associations, climate science experts, risk assessment experts, and federal partners. CREAT leverages the most current scientific information available at the time of development to help define the climate scenarios to assess and the economic factors to consider under a range of potential operational and infrastructure failures Results from these assessments highlight opportunities for effective adaptation and gaps in knowledge to address before revisiting the assessment as part of long-term decision making.

This talk will highlight CREAT and the Resilient Strategies Guide, applications that guide water utility managers through the climate risk assessment process and help them evaluate adaptation priorities. The talk will also include a demo of our Data Maps, which provide easy-to-access historical and projected climate data from CREAT and are useful for utility decision making.