Reliability Approach in Economic Assessment of Adapting Infrastructure to Climate Change

Abstract

Climate conditions have impacts on performance of infrastructures, and the impacts are expected to increase in the future due to climate change. Future climate conditions should be taken into account in establishing adaptation strategies for infrastructures. However, project-level performance analyses that incorporate climate-change scenarios have not been of major concern in economic assessment. Addressing this issue, this study presents a reliability approach to assess the economic cost and benefit of adapting infrastructure to climate change. Using climate-change scenarios, a deterioration modeling methodology is proposed to reflect the impact of climate conditions on the performance of infrastructure. The gamma process, which has been widely used for modeling monotonic deteriorations, was used within the methodology. Expected damage cost by climate-related risks was also estimated. Decision makers can apply the proposed methodology to the adaptation of various infrastructures under climate change.