Approach to Addressing the Impacts of Climate Variability on Roadway and Bridge Design

This paper’s purpose is to describe for planners and engineers an approach to adapting transportation infrastructure, principally roadways and bridges, to the changes expected in the global climate. It is acknowledged that the affects and timing of climate changes are difficult to anticipate and that planning and design has its own inherent risks that must be considered on top of the uncertainty of climate change. Those conditions notwithstanding, climatologists, planners, and engineers are working on ways to reduce uncertainty and deal with risks in ways that can result in facilities that can provide reasonable levels of service, appropriate to their requirements in ways that are safe, efficient, and cost-effective. This paper first identifies the potential changes in climate and local environmental conditions and impacts that will be of interest to the transportation designer; then discusses the status of climate forecasting, one of the great uncertainties in climate adaptation planning; and finally addresses climate and design risk and suggests approaches to dealing with expected changes. The paper concludes that any adaptation strategy must be responsive to future conditions that can be very different than those of the past. Therefore, using the general approaches described in this paper - allowing for flexibility in designs, developing alternative scenarios and responses, performing sensitivity analysis, incorporating risk assessment / management techniques integrated with climate forecasting and infrastructure design - can result in facilities that can be expected to meet their requirements without being over-designed. Such an approach will also minimize the total life-cycle cost.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Keller, Jake A
  • Armstrong, Amit
  • Flood, Michael
  • Meyer, Michael D
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2011-1-23 to 2011-1-27
• Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 90th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bridge design; Climate change; Environmental impacts; Global warming; Highway design; Precipitation (Meteorology); Sea level; Temperature
• Subject Areas: Design; Environment; Highways; I15: Environment; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01340950
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 11-3356
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: May 26 2011 10:29AM