Re-imagining design storm criteria for the challenges of the 21st century

Markolf, Samuel A.; Chester, Mikhail; Helmrich, Alysha; Shannon, Kelsey

doi:10.1016/j.cities.2020.102981

Cited by 25 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Precipitation non‐stationarity may lead to changes in expected flood risk (Mallakpour & Villarini, 2015; Villarini et al., 2020), as flood management infrastructure (e.g., channels, roadway culverts, detention basins, stormwater systems) and other critical infrastructure (e.g., airports, roadways, bridges, dams) are mostly designed based on the hypothesis of stationarity, which assumes that the probability distribution moments do not change over time (Salas et al., 2018). However, this assumption has been questioned (Markolf et al., 2021; Milly et al., 2008, 2015) due to the impact of climate change on the water cycle (Allan et al., 2020; Peters‐Lidard et al., 2021), especially regarding extreme precipitation (Blenkinsop et al., 2018; Guerreiro et al., 2018). Additionally, there is evidence that heavy, short‐duration rainfall is becoming more intense in recent decades (Fowler et al., 2021; Kunkel et al., 2020; Papalexiou & Montanari, 2019; Westra et al., 2014; Wright et al., 2019), and that these trends will continue during the 21st century as a consequence of global warming (Fix et al., 2018; Janssen et al., 2014; Kharin et al., 2013; Wehner et al., 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Impacts of Future Extreme Precipitation Changes on Flood Engineering Design Across the Contiguous United States

Coelho

Ferreira

Johnston

et al. 2022

Water Resources Research

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The intensification of extreme precipitation in a warming climate is expected to increase flood risk. In order to support flood resilience efforts, it is important to anticipate and quantify potential changes in design standards under future climate conditions. This study assessed how extreme precipitation is expected to change over the 21st century in relation to current National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Atlas 14 design standards over the contiguous United States (CONUS). We used the Community Earth System Model Version 2 large ensemble (CESM2‐LE) simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and incorporated future changes into flood engineering design standard with a spatially distributed quantile delta mapping method. Relative changes in extreme daily precipitation were computed for multiple average recurrence intervals (ARIs) up to 100‐year and different planning horizons (2020, 2040, 2060, 2080, and 2100). The results indicated an intensification of extreme precipitation by approximately 10%–40% in northern regions and 20%–80% in southern regions by 2100. The current 100‐year ARI with 24‐hr duration from NOAA Atlas 14 is projected to become the 50‐year ARI in the Northern Great Plains, less than the 25‐year ARI in Southwest areas, and approximately the 25‐year ARI in the other regions by 2100. While a nationwide consensus is still needed, this work presents a possible methodology for incorporating climate uncertainty in engineering design. A comparison across major metropolitan areas also illustrates regional variability in projected changes relative to NOAA Atlas 14, suggesting a need for varied local‐scale responses.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Impacts of Future Extreme Precipitation Changes on Flood Engineering Design Across the Contiguous United States

Coelho

Ferreira

Johnston

et al. 2022

Water Resources Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the Anthropocene, infrastructure managers (i.e., individuals who design, build, maintain, and decommission infrastructure) can no longer rely on relatively stationary conditions, i.e., the assumption that the past may predict the future, which has been the foundational model of modern infrastructure (Olsen, 2015;Chester and Allenby, 2018;Markolf et al, 2020). For instance, it is not unreasonable to expect gradual climate change to become increasingly significant, and if this transition were to happen rapidly, infrastructure institutions would need to respond within a reasonable timeframe and at a scale of uncertainty that is largely unfamiliar, marking a radical change in how they operate (Wilbanks and Fernandez, 2014;Chester et al, , 2020aHelmrich and Chester, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Exploitative and Explorative Leadership in Support of Infrastructure Resilience

Helmrich

Chester

2022

Front. Sustain. Cities

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Leadership is a critical component in approaching infrastructure resilience. Leadership, the formal and informal governance within an organization, drives an infrastructure system's ability to respond to changing circumstances. Due to the instability of the Anthropocene, infrastructure managers (individuals who design, build, maintain, and decommission infrastructure) can no longer rely on assumptions of stationarity, but instead that shifts are occurring at a faster rate than institutions and infrastructure organizations are adapting. Leadership and organizational change literature provide considerable insights into the ability of organizations to navigate uncertainty and complexity, and infrastructure organizations may be able to learn from this knowledge to avoid obsolescence. Therefore, this article asks: what leadership capabilities do infrastructure organizations need to readily respond to stability and instability? An integrative leadership framework is proposed, exploring capabilities of collaboration, perception and exploration toward learning, and flexible informal and formal governance leveraged by leadership. These capabilities are driven by underlying tensions (e.g., climate change, emerging technologies) and managed through enabling leadership, a set of processes for pivoting between stability and instability. The framework is then applied to infrastructure organizations. Lack of market competition may make infrastructure organizations more open to collaboration and, therefore, learning. However, the need to provide specific services may cause risk adversity and an avoidance of failure, restricting flexibility and innovation. It is critical for infrastructure organizations to identify their strengths and weaknesses so they may develop an approach to change at pace with their external environments.

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“…The impacts of climate change require fundamental changes in planning, design, and management of systems where human-climate interactions exist. For example, infrastructure designed with U.S. standards (Lopez-Cantu and Samaras 2018, Wright et al 2019, Stoner et al 2019, Underwood et al 2017, Bartos and Chester 2015, Markolf et al 2020 based on historical records is unlikely to perform as intended over the multiple decades or more that infrastructure is in use (Chester et al 2020). In the U.S., local governments have a primary role in enabling climate resilience, and local knowledge about city-specific vulnerabilities and costs (Cook et al 2020) increases the effectiveness of adaptation efforts (Fünfgeld 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because stormwater infrastructure is in service for many decades, climate resilience strategies for new and existing stormwater infrastructure systems are required (Cook et al 2020, DeGaetano and Castellano 2017, Mailhot and Duchesne 2010, Prein et al 2017, Chester et al 2021. Stormwater infrastructure is a critical contributor to climate resilience outcomes in cities and communities, as this infrastructure collects and conveys stormwater runoff during rainfall events, prevents flooding and damage, and allows safe travel through the transportation network (Markolf et al 2020.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating uncertainty from downscaled rainfall projections into climate resilience planning in U.S. cities

Lopez-Cantu

Webber

Samaras

2022

Environ. Res.: Infrastruct. Sustain.

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The planning, design, and maintenance of stormwater infrastructure must be informed by changing rainfall patterns due to climate change. However, there is little consensus on how future climate information should be used, or how uncertainties introduced by use of different methods and datasets should be characterized or managed. These uncertainties exacerbate existing challenges to using climate information on local or municipal scales. Here we analyze major cities in the U.S., 48 of which developed climate adaptation and resilience plans. Given the prevalence of Depth Duration Frequency (DDF) curves for planning infrastructure for rainfall, we then assessed the underlying climate information used in these 48 plans to show how DDF curves used for resilience planning and the resulting outcomes can be affected by stakeholders’ methodological choices and datasets. For rainfall extremes, many resilience plans varied by trend detection method, data preprocessing steps, and size of study area, and all used only one of the available downscaled climate projection datasets. We evaluate the implications of uncertainties across five available climate datasets and show the level of climate resilience to extreme rainfall depends on the dataset selected for each city. We produce risk matrices for a broader set of 77 U.S. cities to highlight how local resilience strategies and decisions are sensitive to the climate projection dataset used in local adaptation plans. To help overcome barriers to using climate information, we provide an open dataset of future daily rainfall values for 2-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-year annual recurrence intervals for 77 cities and compare resilience outcomes across available climate datasets that each city can use for comparison and for robust resilience planning. Because of uncertainty in climate projections, our results highlight the importance of no-regret and flexible resilience strategies that can be adjusted with new climate information.

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Re-imagining design storm criteria for the challenges of the 21st century

Cited by 25 publications

References 87 publications

Potential Impacts of Future Extreme Precipitation Changes on Flood Engineering Design Across the Contiguous United States

Potential Impacts of Future Extreme Precipitation Changes on Flood Engineering Design Across the Contiguous United States

Navigating Exploitative and Explorative Leadership in Support of Infrastructure Resilience

Incorporating uncertainty from downscaled rainfall projections into climate resilience planning in U.S. cities

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