Reconciling complexity and deep uncertainty in infrastructure design for climate adaptation

Helmrich, Alysha; Chester, Mikhail

doi:10.1080/23789689.2019.1708179

Cited by 37 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…The slowness and limited ability of COVID-19 policy responses to recognize and ameliorate psychological impacts and underlying vulnerabilities mirrors weakness in approaching climate change risk and loss where psychological impacts are rarely considered in research or policy (Kim & Bostwick, 2020;Satterthwaite et al, 2007). Politically, weaknesses in early action, managing uncertainty, building trust in state institutions and planning for equitable recovery are also recognized challenges for climate risk management (Amundsen et al, 2010;Helmrich & Chester, 2020). As COVID-19 responses have matured a key component has been the degree to which local capacities have been integrated into national programmes -from neighbours shopping for each other, to a resurgence in community-based action and local pharmacists administering vaccinations.…”

Section: Risk Root Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience

Pelling

2021

Climate and Development

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Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic opens an opportunity for enhanced research and action on inclusive urban resilience to climate change. Lessons and their implications are used to describe a climate resilience research renewal agenda. Three key lessons are identified. The first lesson is generic, that climate change risk coexists and interacts with other risks through overlapping social processes, conditions and decision-making contexts. Two further lessons are urban specific: that networks of connectivity bring risk as well as resilience and that overcrowding is a key indicator of the multiple determinants of vulnerability to both COVID-19 and climate change impacts. From these lessons three research priorities arise: dynamic and compounding vulnerability, systemic risk and risk root cause analysis. These connected agendas identify affordable and healthy housing, social cohesion, minority and local leadership and multiscale governance as entry points for targeted research that can break cycles of multiple risk creation and so build back better for climate change as well as COVID-19 in recovery and renewal.

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Section: Risk Root Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience

Pelling

2021

Climate and Development

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“…However, the costeffectiveness of the inspection solutions could be improved by considering flexible inspection times to take into account, in a comprehensive way, the deep uncertainties associated to the climate-related complexity. For example, the highest level of deep uncertainty "True ambiguity" (Helmrich and Chester, 2020) considers the more realistic scenario where the future cannot be predicted. To face this scenario, inspection times should be defined and updated taking into account the feedback from a given number of years of operation under a real climate as well as new climate change predictions at the moment of the assessment/updating.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization of Condition-Based Maintenance of Wood Utility Pole Network Subjected to Hurricane Hazard and Climate Change

Salman

Salarieh

Bastidas‐Arteaga

et al. 2020

Front. Built Environ.

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Electric power distribution systems that link the bulk power grid (generation and transmission systems) to customers are the leading cause of power outages due to their vulnerability to extreme wind events, especially hurricanes. The strength of the wood poles that typically support the distribution lines also deteriorate over time. The vulnerability of the poles is expected to increase due to the potential impact of climate change on both hurricane hazard and wood decay rate. As such, an effective maintenance planning method is required for the vast number of poles supporting distribution lines. This paper presents a framework to optimize the maintenance of a network of wood utility poles. Corrective replacement due to failure caused by hurricanes and preventive replacement due to excessive decay are considered. The objective is to find the optimal inspection interval for the preventive replacement to minimize the long-term maintenance cost. To solve the optimization problem, the decay of the poles is modeled as a stationary gamma process. The impact of climate change on the rate of pole failure and replacement is also investigated. Two locations are considered as case studies: Miami, Florida, and New York City, New York. The period from 2010 to 2099 is considered for the study. The results of the case study show that the optimal inspection/replacement cycle determined using the developed framework results in lower total maintenance costs compared to current typical utility practice. Based on the inspection and replacement costs used in the study, the results show that adopting a periodic preventive maintenance policy decreases the failure rate of the poles but increases the total maintenance cost. However, only the cost of replacing the poles is considered here. Other considerations, such as indirect costs due to power outages and the impact of pole failure on system reliability, can render the adoption of a preventive replacement policy cost-effective. The results also show that climate change can increase the total maintenance cost. Based on current typical utility maintenance practice, climate change can increase the total maintenance cost by up to 8% in Miami and 6% in NYC, depending on the emission scenario considered.

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“…Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty is relevant for managing types of uncertainty that are largely unknown and which cannot necessarily be characterized through probability distributions (Helmrich and Chester, 2019). It involves a cyclical process of framing the analysis, performing an exploratory uncertainty analysis, choosing initial actions and contingent actions, and iteration and re-examination (Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrastructure Interdependency Failures From Extreme Weather Events as a Complex Process

Bondank

Chester

2020

Front. Water

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The loss of infrastructure services under extreme weather events from climate change emerges from complex interactions between the social, environmental, and technological system variables which drive the behavior of infrastructure systems. The complexity of interactions causes failures to cascade in unpredictable ways, often between different infrastructure systems. A common approach to managing this unpredictability is to attempt to characterize the cause-and-effect relationships of infrastructure interdependencies, whether it be related to the resource flows, geographic proximity, logical connections, or the common use of cyber infrastructure. We posit that though a reductive approach toward characterization of interdependencies produces useful insights, it is an insufficient strategy by itself due to the complexity and unpredictability involved in the occurrence and magnitude of cascades of failure across systems. We present historical case studies which demonstrate that cascades from interdependencies display essential tenets of complexity-namely non-linearities, path dependence, and emergence. The Cynefin decision-making framework suggests that management of systems that are in the complex domain include strategies such as Decision Making Under Uncertainty and Safe-to-Fail, which address uncertainty by probing, testing, collecting and analyzing data, and lastly deploying solutions with a commitment to reassessing the systems as conditions change. We therefore recommend that in order to mitigate the surprise from cascades of failure across systems from extreme weather events, infrastructure managers supplement their planning efforts with these types of strategies.

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Reconciling complexity and deep uncertainty in infrastructure design for climate adaptation

Cited by 37 publications

References 55 publications

A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience

A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience

Optimization of Condition-Based Maintenance of Wood Utility Pole Network Subjected to Hurricane Hazard and Climate Change

Infrastructure Interdependency Failures From Extreme Weather Events as a Complex Process

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