Toward the Integration of Hydrometeorological and Climate Complexities in Standards for Resilient Infrastructure Design

The occurrence of the 2019 flood event(s) in the Northern High Plains (and many other events around the globe) have challenged engineering paradigms for infrastructure design and management. In a region where the intensification of the hydrologic cycle emerges from the geographic overlap of --and the geophysical interactions among-- the Ogallala Aquifer, the Missouri River Basin, an area of a sustained intensification of agriculture, and inherent land surface-atmosphere processes, where traditional standards for infrastructure management and design grapple to address the effects of current and future weather and climate phenomena. Here, the authors illustrate the complexities of a series of hydrometeorological and climate events occurred in cascade -and not necessarily all extreme- paired with the standards used to design and manage water and agricultural resources in the region. The time and spatial limitations of current standards for infrastructure (water and agriculture) management are aligned with the evolution and effects of the 2019 flood event to identify potential approaches to create new standards. Some examples of water quantity and quality, intraseasonal and interannual effects on cropping systems, will evidence when these events lead to unprecedented drivers for decision making to avoid infrastructure transformation. Finally, we evidence the need to advance the science of attribution and decision making for resilient infrastructure in order to create standards suitable for our changing complex landscapes.