Climate Adaptation of Structures and Infrastructure

Climate adaptation in engineering requires the consideration and utilization of future climate conditions, which are subject to deep uncertainty—occurs when decision makers and stakeholders do not know or cannot agree on the likelihood of different future scenarios. Traditional practices in structure and infrastructure engineering are often rigid and fixed and can be inefficient and problematic: underestimation of future climate change leads to insufficient adaptation efforts planned and employed, whereas overestimation of future climate change leads to excessive resources spent. An emerging and promising approach to such challenges is to adopt dynamic or flexible strategies, by providing options to adjust, modify, and/or expand structure and infrastructure during their design life based on the updated and improved future climate conditions. These strategies provide opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness in climate adaptation, although the implementation in engineering remains scarce. To integrate the typical and alternative flexible adaptation strategies and facilitate and improve the climate adaptation of structures and infrastructure, both adaptation designs and decision-making tools need to be advanced, and subsequently introduced and organized for the broader engineering community. 

You will have the opportunity to create posters, reports, conference presentations and journal articles out of the research that is gained from this project.

climate change, infrastructure, uncertainty, adaptation