The centrality of engineering codes and risk-based design standards in climate adaptation strategies

Abstract

Engineering codes, design standards and analytical criteria for hydraulic structures are the final determinative specifications for designing and constructing a water resources project. As such, they are the authoritative and legally accepted standards for project design and construction. Engineering codes and standards are developed to optimize public safety and performance by focusing on structural reliability, which includes a wide range of extreme conditions that encompass most contemporary climate uncertainties, and which are likely to overlap some portion of future climate non-stationary conditions. Current practices of risk-based planning and design standards have evolved incrementally, responding to each catastrophic natural disaster, whether it is geotechnical, floods, droughts or hurricanes. Design standards and building codes encompass an accumulation of changes that progressively reflect changing climate conditions, most notably because they focus on climate extremes. Design standards and embedded ‘safety factors’ that are based on extremes are likely to encompass a good deal of an anticipated non-stationary climate regime and its associated uncertainties. Modern risk analysis methods and risk-based standards, codes and methods comprise an important part of a progressive autonomous adaptation to climate change. They represent an essential component of ‘no regrets’ climate adaptation.

Dynamic adaptive engineering pathways for mitigating flood risks in Shanghai with regret theory

“…Despite the efforts to develop a theoretical background for computing climatological design factors under https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-022-00017-w non-stationary conditions, a number of obstacles have prevented the practical and standardized implementation of these methods 37 . It has also been acknowledged that non-stationary models introduce additional sources of uncertainty and the existing non-stationary models do not make the non-stationary signals emerge more clearly than before 38 . We cannot afford to wait and have to develop practical tools for managing future non-stationarity and uncertainty now 36 .…”

Assessment of economic impacts in flood events in Lages/SC, Brazil

“…The program provides the capability to formulate and evaluate flood damage reduction plans using risk-based analysis methods by estimating the expected annual damage (EAD), which can be used to compare different scenarios, that consider with and without project conditions and distinct analysis years in such a way that can support the development of a flood risk management plan (Lehman, 2016;Martínez-Gomariz et al, 2020). EAD is calculated by the integration of the damage-probability function; that being so, damage is estimated by multiple Monte Carlo sampling of discharge-exceedance probability, stage-discharge, and stage-damage relationships and their associated uncertainties (USACE, 2016;Stakhiv, 2021).…”