Developing a Self-sustained Continuing Capacity for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Informing Decisions - Climate Change and Infrastructure, Urban Systems, and Vulnerabilities - page 73

Chapter 7
Developing a Self-sustained Continuing
Capacity for Monitoring, Evaluation,
and Informing Decisions
For the communities of experts on climate change and infrastructures and urban sys-
tems, along with decision-makers and other stakeholders whose support is important to
keep the assessment process self-sustaining, the challenge is to combine atention to both
science issues (the what) and institutional issues (the how). Roles will need to be played
by a variety of kinds of institutions beyond the federal government alone - founda-
tions, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and universities - all of which
have unique things to offer but limitations in performing some aspects of the continuing
process. Universities may be especially important as institutions with long-term com-
mitments to learning and communicating that learning, increasingly looking toward
issue-oriented cross-disciplinary programs in response to both student and stakeholder
interest. But a key will probably be implementation of the US Global Change Research
Program's Strategic Plan, with its support for decision support science and supporting
assessments. In addition, the nation's engineering societies - such as the American Soci-
ety of Civil Engineers - will be an invaluable resource for knowledge development and
application in assessing and responding to challenges for adaptive built infrastructures.
A. Science Issues
The science issues include:
• strengthening linkages between climate science and domain science, especially
regarding scenarios
• enhancing scientific capacities for analyzing cross-sectoral interactions and inter-
dependencies at both regional and urban scales
• increasing the capacity to acquire emerging knowledge from experience as well
as formal published research, including experience from efforts to make infra-
structures and urban systems more climate-resilient
B. Institutional Challenges
• Institutional roles and partnerships, given that infrastructures and urban
systems involve extensive and intensive interactions among a wide variety
of kinds of expertise, vested interests, and service-rooted concerns: national