Framing Climate Change Implications for Infrastructures and Urban Systems - Climate Change and Infrastructure, Urban Systems, and Vulnerabilities - page 17

Chapter 3
Framing Climate Change Implications
for Infrastructures and Urban Systems
For more than half a century, climate change impact and vulnerability assessments have
tended to focus on issues for natural (and human-managed natural) environments,
where changes in climate parameters have direct effects on such systems as ecology
and hydrology. Because human-built systems are so often designed in part to buffer hu-
man well-being from natural-environmental constraints, it was implicitly assumed that
implications of climate change for human infrastructures could be treated as a lesser
concern.
What we know now, however, is that human-built infrastructures are of particular
interest to the US population and to decision-makers who respond to their needs and
demands. Climate and weather events can directly affect services that most people care
about, such as comfort, convenience, mobility, labor productivity, and security. In many
cases, the greatest concerns are with population and service concentrations in urban ar-
eas, especially those located in vulnerable areas, which are often threatened by storms,
floods, wildfires, droughts, heat waves, and other weather phenomena linked to longer-
term climatic processes.
As a new topic for national climate change assessments in the U.S., any effort to de-
velop findings about major implications of climate change for infrastructures and urban
systems needs to start by outlining a general framework of thought.
A. Sensitivities Of Infrastructures And Urban Systems
To Climate Change
Implications of climate change for infrastructures and urban systems can be examined
by assessing historical experience with extreme weather events and by simulating future
conditions, including both individual events and either a series of extreme events in a
short time period (Figure 3 ) or the combination of an extreme weather event with an-
other type of threat at the same time (Wilbanks and Kates, 2010).
1) EXAMPLES FROM HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE
Familiar examples from recent experience include Hurricanes Irene and Katrina.
Hurricane Irene combined direct infrastructure damage, flooding, and winds that
did far more than topple trees and turn out the lights across the Baltimore area. The
storm left sewage spills, forced beach closures and triggered warnings to stay away from
the water. The worst problem came in the Baltimore Highlands area southwest of the
city, where a ruptured sewer main poured about 100 million gallons of raw sewage into
the lower Patapsco River in the first week. Power outages also led to more than a dozen