Adapting Urban Infrastructure to Climate Change: A Drainage Case Study
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 141, Issue 4
Abstract
Attributes of an effective infrastructure adaptation planning process as well as methods for choosing among adaptation strategies are described. The major attributes include: (1) a vulnerability assessment, (2) proactive adaptation strategies that are implemented over time and space, (3) climate change scenario analysis including climate surprises to handle the uncertainty of the future climate, (4) actions that are robust and/or flexible and adjustable, (5) a planned, progressive approach that ties implementation to critical thresholds of actual climate changes and preserves options for future actions, (6) evaluation with multiple social, economic and environmental criteria, and (7) integration of local stakeholders into the planning process. Multiple methods can be used to generate and evaluate adaptation strategies. A subset of the key attributes is then used in a case study of urban drainage management, which was designed and implemented to illustrate these attributes. It is shown that multicriteria scenario analysis can be effectively used to generate and evaluate alternative adaptation strategies. The identification of when critical thresholds are reached under conditions of climate variability and change is a major research need.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Sectoral Applications Research Program Grant Number NA07OAR4310373, Guidance Tools for Planning and Management of Urban Drainage Systems under a Changing Climate. The first author was also partially supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources. We appreciate the information provided for the case study by Vithal Deshpande, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Robert King, William Pisano, and Owen O’Riordan. The four anonymous reviewers and the editors provided extremely helpful comments.
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Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 141 • Issue 4 • April 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 28, 2013
Accepted: Feb 11, 2014
Published online: Jul 21, 2014
Discussion open until: Dec 21, 2014
Published in print: Apr 1, 2015
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