Infrastructure Risks, Climate-Smart Engineering, and Design Longevity: Co-Developing Products with the Architecture and Engineering Sector through the Industry Proving Grounds.

Climate change is impacting every sector of the economy and is threatening the prosperity of the United States. Industries are working to adapt and build resilience, from how they source and move their goods to how they plan their infrastructure investments and operations and support climate vulnerable communities across the country. NOAA plays a crucial role in rapidly connecting industry to accessible, contextualized, and useful data to support its decision-making and protect billions of dollars in investment in the United States.

Through funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is leading the Industry Proving Grounds (IPG), a multi-million dollar effort to radically improve the delivery and industry uptake of climate data. Through the IPG, NOAA is helping key sectors of the U.S. economy–architecture and engineering, re/insurance, and retail–make climate-smart investments and build resilience. By integrating users at every stage of the service delivery model, from identifying user needs to rapidly prototyping and launching new products, the IPG is iteratively co-developing capabilities industry is asking for.

The architecture and engineering sector relies heavily on NOAA data and information to inform building codes and requirements, assess risk to built infrastructure, and inform climate-smart engineering approaches. As the United States invests historic amounts of funding in improving and updating its infrastructure, the IPG is partnering with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to develop new datasets and products that will inform building codes across the country. From coastal risks and intense rainfall to snow load and straight-line winds, the IPG is co-developing a variety of products based on industry needs and building a customized web-portal that speaks directly to the requirements of end-users. This talk will explore how the IPG is building on a strong foundation laid by the NOAA-ASCE Taskforce to co-develop products to empower climate resilient infrastructure investments.