Introduction - Climate Change and Infrastructure, Urban Systems, and Vulnerabilities - page 1

Chapter 1
Introduction
The third U.S. national assessment of climate change impacts and responses, the Na-
tional Climate Assessment (NCA), includes a number of chapters summarizing impacts
on sectors, sectoral cross-cuts, and regions. One of the sectoral cross-cuting chapters is
on the topic of urban/infrastructure/vulnerability implications of climate change in the U.S.
As a part of the NCA effort, a number of member agencies of the U.S. Global Change
Research Program provided technical input regarding the topics of the NCA chapters.
For the urban/infrastructure/vulnerability topic, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
is one of the responsible agencies; and this report was prepared for DOE by the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in support of the NCA. DOE's interest grows out
of a longstanding research focus on energy infrastructures and their relationships with
other infrastructures and systems, such as water and land, led by the Climate and Envi-
ronmental Systems Division of the Office of Science.
Unlike many of the other chapters, which have equivalents in previous national as-
sessments, this particular topic is appearing in NCA for the first time. In past assess-
ments, cross-sectoral issues related to infrastructures and urban systems have not
received a great deal of atention; and, in fact, in some cases the existing knowledge
base on cross-sectoral interactions and interdependencies, at least as represented in pub-
lished research literatures, appears to be quite limited. Studies dating back as far as 1982
(Lovins and Lovins, Britle Power ) have, however, pointed to the vulnerability of large,
complex infrastructures to large-scale failures, and this underlying concern has grown
in recent years (e.g., Villasenor, Brookings, “Securing an Infrastructure Too Complex to
Understand,” September 2011).
As a result, this technical report breaks new ground as a component of climate change
vulnerability and impact assessments in the U.S., which means that some of its assess-
ment findings are rather speculative, more in the nature of propositions for further study
than specific conclusions offered with a high level of confidence. But it is a welcome start
in addressing questions that are of interest to many policymakers and stakeholders.
For broader issues related to social as well as infrastructural aspects of climate
change vulnerabilities and risk management strategies in urban areas, this technical re-
port should be read in conjunction with a second technical report on U.S. Cities and
Climate Change: Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Vulnerabilities, supported by NASA.
For more atention to energy/water/land use interactions, see an additional technical re-
port on that topic, also supported by DOE.
All of the technical reports to the NCA were prepared on a highly accelerated
schedule. As an early step in organizing the NCA, a workshop was held in November
2010 to discuss sectoral and regional assessment activities. Out of that workshop came
a number of further topical workshops and a working outline of the NCA 2012 report,