Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Transportation Systems and Infrastructure: Gulf Coast Study, Phase 2: Task 3.1: Screening for Vulnerability

Federal Highway Administration;Climate Change Clearinghouse2014PDFTech ReportHyman, RobertKafalenos, RobertBeucler, BrianICF International (Firm)United States. Department of Transportation. Center for Climate Change and Environmental ForecastingUnited StatesClimate changeMultimodal transportationMetropolitan planning organizationsEvaluation and assessmentDisaster preparednessRisk assessmentMethodologyFHWA-HEP-14-033GS-10F-0124JAs part of Gulf Coast Study Phase 2, the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) sought to improve its understanding of how a metropolitan transportation system\u2014including highways, ports, airports, rail, transit, and pipelines\u2014could be affected by climate change. Building on previous work under this project that determined which transportation assets were critical and that developed climate projection data and scenarios,1 the U.S. DOT developed and tested methodologies for conducting a transportation system-wide climate vulnerability assessment. The goals of this effort were two-fold: (1) to develop and pilot novel approaches for conducting system-wide climate change vulnerability assessments with the intention that the methodologies could be replicated by other transportation agencies, and (2) to understand where important transportation-related climate vulnerabilities may exist in Mobile, Alabama, the MPO serving as the pilot for all methodologies developed under the Gulf Coast project.109