Adaptation Options for Infrastructure Under Changing Climate Conditions

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to impact the safety of existing structures, to increase the frequency of weather-related disasters, to regionally increase premature weathering and to significantly change design criteria and engineering of structures. Because infrastructure built in current times is intended to survive for decades to come, it is critically important that adaptation options to climate change be developed today, incorporated into design and implemented as soon as possible. Prioritization of required adaptation actions will need to account for existing and future vulnerabilities, the variable lifecycles of structures and replacement and maintenance cycles. "No regrets" types of adaptation actions that are available today need to be applied as soon as possible. These include measures to reduce uncertainties in climatic design values, regularly updated climatic design values, enforcement of codes and standards, maintenance of climate data records and networks, consistent forensic analyses of infrastructure failures, regular maintenance scheduling and community disaster management planning. However, given the potential changes expected, it is also likely that many impacts on communities and infrastructure will lie outside of the coping ranges of infrastructure. When this occurs, engineering and planning practices will need account for these growing uncertainties while new adaptation options are developed over time.