Transcript Slide 1

Building Resilient Communities
Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
URS Group Inc.
2010 ASFPM National Conference
May 2010
Agenda
What is a resilient community?
—
Understanding the climate challenge
—
Applications of resilience to regional planning
and climate change adaptation
—
Lessons learned from Hillsborough County, FL
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
What is a Resilient Community?
What is a Resilient Community?1
Resilience…
- Is the capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back
rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the
face of turbulent change
Resilient communities…
- Should be able to avoid the cascading system failures to help
minimize any disaster's disruption to everyday life and the local
economy
- Have the ability to quickly return citizens to work, reopen
businesses, and restore other essential services needed for a full
and swift economic recovery
1. Source: Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI), http://www.resilientus.org/
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Community Resiliency Characteristics
 Includes various social, economic, infrastructure,
environmental, and institutional components
 These components need to be in balance and grow
coherently over time
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Climate Change and Transportation Resiliency
 Possible climate change impacts:
- Rising temperatures
 Transportation resiliency issues
- System capacity
• Managing, maintaining and constructing
new infrastructure
- Rising sea levels
- Hydrologic changes
• Continuity of flow – personal, business
and commercial travel
- Shifts in weather patterns
- Travel demand
• Increases in population
• Demographic shifts
• Energy availability
• Changes in travel behavior – modal shifts
- Land use and economic development
• Development policies and pattern shifts
• Health and quality of life attitude shifts
- Environmental
• Streamlining
• Air quality improvements
• Energy consumption reductions
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Understanding the
Climate Challenge
Powerful storms and other natural hazards
already wreak havoc today
 Since 1953, there have been a total of 1,907 disaster
declarations (an average of 33 a year)2
 There has been a surge in economic losses from natural
disasters in recent years,3 from $50 billion in the 1950s
to $800 billion in the 1990s
 Coastal U.S. cities have incurred some of the more
significant losses due to hurricane events (i.e., Hugo,
Fran, Katrina, and Ike)
2. FEMA - http://www.fema.gov/news/disaster_totals_annual.fema
3. Resilient Coasts – A Blueprint for Action. April 2009. The Heinz Institute.
http://www.heinzctr.org/publications/PDF/Resilient_Coasts_Blueprint_Final.pdf
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Key challenges for planners and engineers
 Range of hazards
- Unpredictability of occurrence
- Uncertainty of
severity of impact
 Critical infrastructure/node identification
- Robustness
• Protection, maintenance, replacement
- Redundancy
 Incorporating
climate change science
and risk management into
regional planning
 Funding for required investments
Source of Image: http://mceer.buffalo.edu/publications/bulletin/06/20-01/images/katrina2bridges-lg.jpg
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Applications of Resilience to Regional
Planning and Climate Change
Adaptation
Considering resilience as part of the regional
transportation planning process
 Developing a coordinated, analytical process with
metropolitan planning organizations and state
departments of transportation
- Meeting travel demand through long-range multi-modal planning
and programming
• Considering the impacts of a range of threats on the
transportation system
• Understanding the potential impact of climate change on travel
demand, modal assignments, and strategic capital investments
- Creating an inventory of critical infrastructure
- Advancing asset management in the context of system redundancy
and robustness
- Ensuring safe and secure system-wide and modal operations
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Sample risk assessment of critical infrastructure
and key resources
Resiliency
High
Intermodal
Facilities
Other Bridges
Ferry Systems
Low
Critical Bridge
Connections
Utilities
On-Water
Storage Areas
Light
Moderate
Economic Impact
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Severe
Looking at resilience beyond the current environment
 Developing climate change/transportation tools to
support analysis and decision-making
- Periodic regional threat and vulnerability assessments
• Identifying and modifying an applicable methodology
• Ensuring ease of use
- Identifying range of appropriate and affordable protective
measures
• Risk calculus – what are acceptable levels of risk
• Benefit cost analysis
• Travel demand modeling and sensitivity analyses
• Plans and policies
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Looking at resilience beyond the current environment
 Advancing projects into regional and statewide
Transportation Improvement Programs
- Selecting investment prioritization criteria
- Assigning appropriate weight to climate change and resiliency
 Identifying and implementing adaptation strategies
- Relocating infrastructure
- Adding transportation redundancy
- Modifying land use policies in vulnerable geographical areas
- Increasing the mix of energy generation – renewables, etc.
- Changes in building codes
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Looking at resilience beyond the current environment
 Assessing the relationship of advance transportation
technologies (e.g., Intelligent Transportation Systems) to
climate change and enhancing infrastructure resiliency
- Shift in investments from capital improvements to technology
- Increasing emphasis on real time information exchanges and creating
situational awareness to manage the transportation system
 Expanding regional coordination as part of long range
transportation planning to include interdependent sectors and
stakeholders
- Energy
- Communications
- Water
- Emergency management
- Law enforcement
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Looking at resilience beyond the current environment
 Regularly re-evaluate the impacts of climate change as
part of the regional transportation planning process
• As better science becomes available
• As threats and vulnerabilities are reassessed
• As policy decisions are made
• As knowledge of how infrastructure and people will react/adapt
to climate change impacts emerges
 Determining what changes need to be made with
regards to plans, policies, regulations and capital
investments
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Recent Trends in Regional
Transportation Planning
Legislative and Regulatory Requirements Affecting
Regional Transportation Planning
 Air quality and transportation planning
- Conformity analyses for non-attainment areas
• Tests, using analytical models, the relationship between travel demand
and air quality
• Planning process also considers demographics and economics, and
jurisdictional and institutional issues
• Influences direction of regional planning and capital investment selection
 Security and emergency management
- SAFETEA-LU calls for MPOs to incorporate security and emergency
management into its long range transportation plans
• Creates an additional dimension and rationale for assessing short and
long-term capital investment needs
• Requires identifying critical infrastructure, nodes and resources; where
resiliency and redundancy is necessary
• Provides additional insight on how to manage the transportation system
when responding to an event
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Possible next steps for climate change and regional
transportation
 Role of threat and vulnerability assessments
- Adaptation of a methodology to be applied at the regional level
- Determining the frequency an assessment is completed
- Translating finding into protective measures that enhance transportation
resiliency
 System performance and critical infrastructure
- Establishing a level of system performance to be maintained
- Establishing criteria for identifying and classifying critical infrastructure
- Identifying the short and long term vulnerabilities of the infrastructure
 Assessing system disruptions
- Modifying regional travel demand models
- Conducting travel demand sensitivity models
- Identifying alternatives, additional capacity
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Possible next steps for climate change and regional
transportation
 Long range transportation and land use plan development
- Add a climate change adaptation chapter in plan(s)
- Identify relevant adaptations
- Re-assess ITS architecture
- Determine its relationship to the system’s safety, security, and emergency
management
- Limit development of areas that could become vulnerable
- Plan and budget for relocation of vulnerable population
 Transportation Improvement Program
- Develop a climate change adaptation criteria for advancing projects toward
implementation
- Build for more severe hazard events (enhance the robustness of the built
environment)
 Asset management practices
- Develop criteria for prioritizing/ staging maintenance
- Developing new management systems
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Moving in a new direction: Hillsborough County MPO –
Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP)
 Added security/emergency management chapter based
on, providing a basis for incorporating climate change
and resiliency considerations:
- Evaluation of relevant hazards and threats
- Identification of critical facilities and nodes within the regional
transportation network
- Review of issues related to climate change impacts on
transportation infrastructure
- Prioritization of vulnerabilities
- Recommendation of appropriate mitigation measures for the
identified vulnerabilities
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Hillsborough County MPO –
Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP)
- Integration of LRTP efforts with post-disaster recovery planning
activities and strategies (both efforts support community and
regional resilience)
- Brought together diverse stakeholder groups – public works,
regional transit, regional planning commission, and emergency
managers to identify and prioritize critical infrastructure
- As a result, modified the LRTP project prioritization process (from
which projects are funded) to account for transportation security
and emergency management issues
- Integrated security and emergency management as a component
of the regional transportation planning process on a continuous
basis
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Mainstreaming Climate Change and Resiliency into
Regional Planning and Projects
 Actively promote climate change and resiliency in the
identification, planning, design, negotiation, and
implementation of strategies, policies, programs, and
projects across agencies and sectors
 Consider climate change and resiliency in the earliest
stages of the decision-making cycle, when regional
challenges and proposed interventions are framed
 Increase understanding of how initiatives outside the
narrowly defined “physical security measures” can be
designed to support regional climate change and
resiliency
 Target investments that enhance the robustness,
resourcefulness, and recovery of the region while also
achieving its core objectives
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change
Thank You
For More Information Contact
Bob Brodesky
[email protected]
857 383-3834
Building Resilient Communities – Effectively Adapting to Climate Change