Efforts to Build Infrastructure Resiliency to Future Hydroclimate Extremes
Publication: Geo-Extreme 2021
ABSTRACT
Extreme hydroclimate events are increasing in frequency and intensity with climate change. This, alongside aging infrastructure, increasing population, and land use changes, makes quantifying and reacting to future changes incredibly difficult. This paper highlights two successful interdisciplinary efforts led by the water management community to manage critical infrastructure for climate resilience when current operational paradigms no longer apply. We highlight these efforts to illustrate (1) best practices and lessons learned when prioritizing and designing projects that enhance infrastructure resilience, and (2) key characteristics that make projects focused on increasing infrastructure resilience to changing hydrometeorological extremes successful. These case studies illustrate the importance of relationships built between researchers, decision makers, and stakeholders, and our recommendations stress the value of collaboration throughout, from project design to project assessment. We also identify the need to integrate prognostic weather and climate products when infrastructure functionality is characterized and to uncover ways to enhance resilience when current operations are not adequate to cope with future hydroclimate extremes.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
AghaKouchak, A., L. Huning, F. Chiang, M. Sadegh, F. Vahedifard, O. Mazdiyasni, H. Moftakhari, and I. Mallakpour. (2018). “How do Natural Hazards Cascade to Cause Disasters?” Nature 561, 458–460.
C2ES (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions). (2018). “Policy options for climate-resilient infrastructure.” January 2018, 9 pp.
Committee on Climate Change. (2017). “Progress in Preparing for Climate Change. Report to Parliament”. London, UK. Retrieved from https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-Report-to-Parliament-Progress-in-preparing-for-climate-change.pdf.
CSIWG [Climate-Safe Infrastructure Working Group]. (2018). “Paying it forward: The Path Toward Climate-Safe Infrastructure in California. Report of the Climate-Safe Infrastructure Working Group to the California State Legislature and the Strategic Growth Council”. Sacramento, CA. Retrieved from http://resources.ca.gov/climate/climate-safe-infrastructure-working-group/.
DiFrancesco, K., A. Gitelman, and D. Purkey. (2020). Bottom-Up Assessment of Climate Risk and the Robustness of Proposed Flood Management Strategies in the American River, CA. Water, 12, 907.
Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations Steering Committee. (2017). “Preliminary viability assessment of Lake Mendocino,” http://escholarship.org/uc/item/66m803p2.
Gershunov, A., T. Shulgina, R. E. S. Clemesha, K. Guirguis, D. W. Pierce, M. D. Dettinger, D. A. Lavers, D. R. Cayan, S. D. Polade, J. F. Kalansky, and F. M. Ralph. (2019). Precipitation regime change in Western North America: The role of Atmospheric Rivers. Scientific Reports, 9, 9944.
Jasperse, J., F. M. Ralph, M. Anderson, L. Brekke, M. Dillabough, M. Dettinger, R. Hartman, C. Jones, P. Rutten, C. Talbot, R. Webb, D. Ford, A. O’Donnell, and A. DuBay. (2015). “A comprehensive plan to evaluate the viability of forecast informed reservoir operations for Lake Mendocino,”.
Klotzbach, P., S. Bowen, R. Pielke, and M. Bell. (2018). Continental U.S. hurricane landfall frequency and associated damage: Observations and future risks. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 99, 1359–1376.
Kotchen, M. J. (2011). “An economic framework for evaluating climate proofing investments on infrastructure.” Chapter 9 in Paving the way for climate-resilient infrastructure: Guidance for practitioners and planners. New York, NY, United Nations Development Program.
Lamjiri, M. A., F. M. Ralph, and M. D. Dettinger. (2020). Recent Changes in United States Extreme 3-Day Precipitation Using the R-CAT Scale. J. Hydrometeor., 21, 1207–1221.
Liu, M., G. A. Vecchi, J. A. Smith, et al. (2019). Causes of large projected increases in hurricane precipitation rates with global warming. npj Clim Atmos Sci 2, 38.
Mahoney, K., J. Lukas, and M. Mueller. (2018) Considering climate change in the estimation of extreme precipitation for dam safety., Vol. VI, 65 pp.
Marcelo, D., C. Mandri-Perrott, S. House, and J. Schwartz. (2016). “Prioritizing infrastructure investment: A framework for government decision making.”, World Bank Group, 41 pp.
McCormick, W., J. Lukas, and K. Mahoney. (2020): 21st Century Dam Safety Rules for Extreme Precipitation in a Changing Climate, Journal of Dam Safety, 17, 29–42.
Milly, P. C. D., J. Betancourt, M. Falkenmark, R. M. Hirsch, Z. W. Kundzewicz, D. P. Lettenmaier, and R. J. Stouffer. (2008). Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? Science (80-.)., 319, 573–574.
Pescaroli, G., and Alexander, D. (2016). Critical infrastructure, panarchies and the vulnerability paths of cascading disasters. Nat Hazards, 82, 175–192.
Reclamation (Bureau of Reclamation). (2021). Water Reliability in the West - 2021 SECURE Water Act Report. Prepared for the United States Congress. Bureau of Reclamation, Water Resources and Planning Office. Denver, Colorado.
Subcommittee on Hydrology - Extreme Storm Events Work Group. (2018). Extreme Rainfall Product Needs. 36p. https://acwi.gov/hydrology/extreme-storm/product_needs_proposal_20181010.pdf.
Sumargo, E., A. M. Wilson, F. M. Ralph, R. Weihs, A. White, J. Jasperse, M. A. Lamjiri, S. Turnbull, C. Downer, and L. Delle Monache. (2020). The Hydrometeorological Observation Network in California’s Russian River Watershed: Development, Characteristics and Key Findings from 1997 to 2019. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 0, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0253.1.
Swain, D. L., B. Langenbrunner, J. D. Neelin, and Hall, A. (2018). Increasing precipitation volatility in twenty-first-century California. Nature Clim Change 8, 427–433.
Tye, M. R., J. P. Giovannettone, A. AghaKouchak, R. E. Beighley, W. J. Capehart, N. Fehrenbacher, R. E. Fields, J. Huang, L. Kaatz, N. Lin, D. Llewellyn, B. Lord, J. R. Olsen, A. Pinson, T. Shi, F. Vahedifard, A. P. Barros, E. Douglas, A. Ganguly, and C. Samaras. (2020). Prioritizing Actions to Adapt the United States’ Infrastructure for Climate Change. Reston, VA: ASCE. Currently under review.
Vano, J. A., M. Dettinger, R. Cifelli, D. Curtis, A. Dufour, K. Miller, J. A. Olsen, and A. M. Wilson. (2019). Hydroclimatic Extremes as Challenges for the Water Management Community: Lessons from Oroville Dam and Hurricane Harvey. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(1), S1–S6.
White, A. B., et al. (2013). A twenty-first century California observing network for monitoring extreme weather events. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, AMS, 30:1585–1603.
Wright, D. B., C. D. Bosma, and T. Lopez‐Cantu. (2019). U.S. hydrologic design standards insufficient due to large increases in frequency of rainfall extremes. Geophysical Research Letters, 46. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083235.
Zscheischler, J., S. Westra, B. J. J. M. van den Hurk, S. I. Seneviratne, P. J. Ward, A. Pitman, A. AghaKouchak, D. N. Bresch, M. Leonard, T. Wahl, and X. Zhang. (2018). Future Climate Risk from Compound Events. Nat. Clim. Change 8 (6), 469–477.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 4, 2021
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.