Infrastructure Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change

The infrastructure resilience and adaptation to climate change research thematic area seeks to create adaptable, science-informed solutions that strengthen infrastructure against climate-related threats while promoting sustainable practices. 

Example research topics include: 

• Improving the reliability of infrastructure systems
  Example projects: CLIMA: Climate-resilient infrastructure adaptations for maladaptive levee networks; developing computational methods for estimating rare events probabilities and system reliability; Resilient Arctic coastal communities to coastal hazards
• Developing sensor technologies for climate adaptation
  Example projects: Understand and forecast long-term variations of in-situ geophysical and geomechanical characteristics of degrading permafrost in the Arctic; quantifying value of information of monitoring systems
• Optimizing decision-making under uncertainty
  Example projects: Applying partially observable Markov decision process to inform optimal maintenance and protection of infrastructure in the face of climate change; establishing frameworks for risk assessment and optimal mitigation
• Climate change and hazard interactions
  Example projects: Linking hydroclimatic change and earthquake hazards; Visualizing inland flood hazards in the face of climate change; Coastal infrastructure adaptation under sea level rise; Resilience and adaptation to the effects of permafrost degradation induced coastal erosion; Modeling changes in riverine and coastal flooding with climate change to inform risk management and adaptation
• Leveraging nature-based solutions
  Example projects: Understanding function of nature-based solutions under climate change; Modeling flood risk reduction and avoided losses due to watershed-scale implementation of nature-based solutions like constructed stormwater wetlands
• Law, policy, and human dimensions
  Example projects: Tracking adaptation progress; investigating mechanisms and capacities that enable resilience and adaptation; advancing theory and practice of adaptation governance; understanding just resilience and adaptation; linking climate science and decision making; understanding drivers/barriers to implementing green stormwater infrastructure