Merging Data on Energy Infrastructure and Climate to Support Climate Adaptation

This paper shows how to merge publicly available data on energy infrastructure with climate data. In particular, we address a gap between infrastructure data referenced by the Climate Resilience Toolkit (CRT) and climate data from models, re-analyses, and observations. Closing such gaps is important to providing robust climate services in adaptation planning and risk management.

As an example of this type of data gap, we consider the U.S. Energy Mapping System developed by the Energy Information Administration. This system is referenced by the CRT and includes data on power plants (coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, etc.), refining and processing assets, pipelines, electrical-transmission lines, and other transport and storage facilities. The EIA Mapping System provides map displays of this data, but these displays cannot be combined with climate data directly in order to quantitatively estimate infrastructure risks due to sea-level rise, storm surge, extreme temperatures, etc. However, some of the EIA data is available in shapefile format, and this provides an opportunity to link to data from climate models, re-analyses, and observations.

We demonstrate how such merging can be done using R tools and discuss lessons learned in this process. Implications for improvement of the CRT and supporting data are also discussed.