Incorporating Climate Resilience into Public Infrastructure Planning Worldwide

This presentation highlights a decade of climate resilience planning, engineering and design case studies actively used to protect public infrastructure and coastal shorelines throughout the United States from the West to East Coast using data and tools from both public and private sources. These case studies illustrate the integration of results from general circulation models and emissions scenarios with client-driven planning horizons, risk tolerance and projected economic impacts.

The physical, social and economic impacts of recent extremes in sea levels and rainfall on public infrastructure are the motivation for communities to assess projected changes in the water and climate variables which are projected to occur with greater frequency and intensity. The case studies in this presentation address improving resilience of existing infrastructure systems, as well as carefully selecting design parameters of new infrastructure systems to balance future risk and performance with wise use of today’s precious public infrastructure funding. These methods focus on communication of future climate uncertainty and the wide range of possible future conditions, within the context of deterministic engineering design parameters. They link the latest science with actionable infrastructure design.

Lessons learned will reflect Jacobs’ role in leading past and ongoing climate resilience planning for infrastructure projects in the wastewater, stormwater, and transportation sectors. Examples are located across the United States, in a range of urban and suburban settings, and reflect a range of project scales, from small projects to multi-billion-dollar programs.

The author will review the step-by-by step process used to interpret historical climate and sea levels and the use of global climate model results to guide clients in selecting the best available climate science and tools to evaluate the costs and benefits of short, medium and long-term climate resilience planning for public infrastructure assets.