Climate Change Adaptation Support for Transportation Practitioners PDF Download

Author: Jon Cybulski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
"Abstract: The nature of the U.S. transportation system requires that actions to adapt to climate change impacts occur primarily at the State and local levels. Federal agencies support State, regional, and local agencies and they work hard to provide frameworks, data, tools, and research and to fund pilot projects as well. Experience has shown that advanced planning to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the impacts of climate change has the potential to save money and prevent economic disruptions. However, even proactive State and local governments that have begun evaluating climate- and extreme weather-related risks to their resources have not yet fully integrated consideration of changing conditions into existing planning and operational practices, and others are in the early stages of identifying the climate risks and vulnerabilities they face. In December 2013, the Volpe Center's Innovation Challenge judges selected as the winning idea a project focused on helping transportation practitioners at all levels better understand, access, and use Federal climate change adaptation resources. This report summarizes the project and presents the resulting "Expert System" concept."--Technical report documentation page.

Author: Division on Earth and Life Studies
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309185408
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
The Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the Division on Earth and Life Studies (DELS) have released the pre-publication version of TRB Special Report 290, The Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation, which explores the consequences of climate change for U.S. transportation infrastructure and operations. The report provides an overview of the scientific consensus on the current and future climate changes of particular relevance to U.S. transportation, including the limits of present scientific understanding as to their precise timing, magnitude, and geographic location; identifies potential impacts on U.S. transportation and adaptation options; and offers recommendations for both research and actions that can be taken to prepare for climate change. The book also summarizes previous work on strategies for reducing transportation-related emissions of carbon dioxide--the primary greenhouse gas--that contribute to climate change. Five commissioned papers used by the committee to help develop the report, a summary of the report, and a National Academies press release associated with the report are available online. DELS, like TRB, is a division of the National Academies, which include the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council.

Author: Tiago Capela Lourenço
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319048767
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Climate change highlights the challenges for long-term policy making in the face of persistent and irreducible levels of uncertainties. It calls for the development of flexible approaches, innovative governance and other elements that contribute to effective and adaptive decision-making. Exploring these new approaches is also a challenge for those involved in climate research and development of adaptation policy. The book provides a dozen real-life examples of adaptation decision making in the form of case studies: · Water supply management in Portugal, England and Wales and Hungary · Flooding, including flood risk in Ireland, coastal flooding and erosion in Southwest France, and flood management in Australia’s Hutt River region · Transport and utilities, including the Austrian Federal railway system, public transit in Dresden, and Québec hydro-electric power · Report examining communication of large numbers of climate scenarios in Dutch climate adaptation workshops.

Author: Dewberry Engineers
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780309481595
Category : Climate change mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Extreme weather events and a changing climate increasingly boost costs to transportation agencies and to the traveling public. While Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are taking into account changing climate and extreme weather when making infrastructure decisions, they typically are not using a formal set of tools or cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) to address climate resilience because they may be too time-consuming and expensive to conduct routinely. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 938: Incorporating the Costs and Benefits of Adaptation Measures in Preparation for Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change--Guidebook was developed to try to fill the gaps identified by DOTs. It is intended to provide a consolidated resource for transportation practitioners to be able to more readily consider CBAs as a tool in their investment-decision making processes when considering different climate and extreme weather adaptation alternatives. This report has additional resources, including a web-only document NCHRP Web-Only Document 271: Guidelines to Incorporate the Costs andBenefits of Adaptation Measures in Preparation for Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change, a Power Point presentation that describes the research and the results, a spreadsheet tool that provides an approximate test to see if it would be cost-effective to upgrade assets to the future conditions posed by climate change, and a spreadsheet tool that uses existing conditions without climate change only to calculate the new return period for future conditions with climate change.

Author: U. S. Department Transportation
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781508526698
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The changing climate poses serious challenges to the transportation community, given the community's need to watch over transportation systems and infrastructure designed to last decades or longer. Transportation functions tied to construction, operations, maintenance, and planning should be grounded in an understanding of the environment expected to support transportation facilities. Decisions therefore need to be informed by an understanding of potential future changes in climate. The understanding of climate change science and the ability to model future change continues to advance, resulting in more precise estimates of future changes in climate. However, the practitioner can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, including the ensemble of models employed, the variety of emissions scenarios used to drive the modeling results, the spatial resolution of the projected climate effects, and other parameters. The purpose of this report is to provide the transportation community (including highway engineers, planners, NEPA practitioners) with digestible, transparent, regional information on projected climate change effects that are most relevant to the U.S. highway system. This information is designed to inform assessments of the risks and vulnerabilities facing the current transportation system, and can inform planning and project development activities. The information in this report can help decision makers begin to address the challenges posed by climate change. It fills an important gap by providing the transportation community with information on climate change and the range of future changes in a usable format. It provides the most up-to-date information available, and is the place to start when seeking to understand how climate change may affect transportation systems and infrastructure. At the same time, this report does not answer every question on future climate change effects; research continues to progress on improving techniques for projecting and assessing climate effects and understanding extreme weather events. In the coming years, model simulations of the effect of changes in greenhouse gas concentrations on the climate will improve, and downscaling techniques that provide finer-scale climate projections will continue to evolve.

Author: Billy Fields
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429640218
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Adaptation Urbanism and Resilient Communities outlines and explains adaptation urbanism as a theoretical framework for understanding and evaluating resilience projects in cities and relates it to pressing contemporary policy issues related to urban climate change mitigation and adaptation. Through a series of detailed case studies, this book uncovers the promise and tensions of a new wave of resilient communities in Europe (Copenhagen, Rotterdam, and London), and the United States (New Orleans and South Florida). In addition, best practice projects in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Delft, Utrecht, and Vancouver are examined. The authors highlight how these communities are reinventing the role of streets and connecting public spaces in adapting to and mitigating climate change through green/blue infrastructure planning, maintaining and enhancing sustainable transportation options, and struggling to ensure equitable development for all residents. The case studies demonstrate that while there are some more universal aspects to encouraging adaptation urbanism, there are also important local characteristics that need to be both acknowledged and celebrated to help local communities thrive in the era of climate change. The book also provides key policy lessons and a roadmap for future research in adaptation urbanism. Advancing resilience policy discourse through multidisciplinary framework this work will be of great interest to students of urban planning, geography, transportation, landscape architecture, and environmental studies, as well as resilience practitioners around the world.

Author: Rae Zimmerman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1781005265
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
'This book is a tremendous information resource, and Dr. Zimmerman is a true data "guru". Informed by her unique combination of interests, Transport, the Environment and Security represents a giant leap forward in understanding this previously understudied confluence of forces, encompassing topics as diverse as how transportation affects the environment and how security problems can affect transportation.' – Vicki Bier, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US 'Zimmerman's book is a much needed addition to our scientific understanding of the nexus between environment and security within a transportation context. Transportation networks (rail and road) are the quintessential American lifeline and disruptions through episodic natural hazards, terrorist activities, or longer term climate changes will have profound changes on society – presently and in the future. Zimmerman illustrates the synergies between environment, transport networks, security, social justice and urban places in a masterful and thoughtful synthesis that underscores the interdependencies within the transportation infrastructure, the nation's vulnerability to transport disruptions, and offers ideas for increasing the resilience of the transportation infrastructure. It will become a standard reference as we re-imagine transport in the 21st century under changing climate, security, environment, and living conditions.' – Susan L. Cutter, University of South Carolina, US 'Transportation planning and policy making have followed a particular model for more than fifty years. Rae Zimmerman begins with the premise that we are in a rut and that the old ways of thinking need to be replaced. An enormous amount of evidence is presented that together argues a strong case for the systematic integration of planning for transportation, the environment, and security. While the book does not get us to an integrated process, it points us to one and starts us down a creative path. A great introduction to the complexities of these relationships.' – Martin Wachs, RAND Corporation, US Effective means of transport are critical under both normal and extreme conditions, but modern transport systems are subject to many diverse demands. This path-breaking book uniquely draws together the typically conflicting arenas of transport, the environment and security, and provides collective solutions to their respective issues and challenges. From a primarily urban perspective, the author illustrates that the fields of transportation, environment (with an emphasis on climate change) and security (for both natural hazards and terrorism) and their interconnections remain robust areas for policy and planning. Synthesizing existing data, new analyses, and a rich set of case studies, the book uses transportation networks as a framework to explore transportation in conjunction with environment, security, and interdependencies with other infrastructure sectors. The US rail transit system, ecological corridors, cyber security, planning mechanisms and the effectiveness of technologies are among the topics explored in detail. Case studies of severe and potential impacts of natural hazards, accidents, and security breaches on transportation are presented. These cases support the analyses of the forces on transportation, land use and patterns of population change that connect, disconnect and reconnect people from their environment and security. The book will prove a fascinating and insightful read for academics, students, and practitioners across a wide range of fields including: transport, environmental economics, environmental management, urban planning, public policy, and terrorism and security.

Author: Fiona Adshead
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136573445
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Highly commended in the Public Health category, BMA Medical Awards 2010 There are enormous health benefits from tackling climate change. This is the first book to set out what health practitioners can do to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, to make health services sustainable, and to design healthy, sustainable communities. The book: - provides an introduction for health practitioners and students to climate change and its current and future health impacts - describes the relationship between health and the environment - gives facts and figures on greenhouse gas emissions - sets out the huge benefits to health of acting on climate change - explains what health practitioners can do - at home, at work and in their organizations, and - shows how you can support action in communities, nationally and globally. Essential reading for: - health professionals, local government, built environment professionals - students across all sectors of health, medicine and public administration - community and voluntary sector, NGOs - the business community involved in private healthcare. The Health Practitioner's Guide to Climate Change is written by an authoritative group of authors from key organisations in the field, including the Met Office, the Faculty of Public Health, Natural England, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Climate and Health Council, the NHS Sustainable Development Unit, the Health Protection Agency, the University of the West of England, Sustrans and the National Social Marketing Centre. Sponsored by The National Heart Forum and the National Social Marketing Centre. Foreword by Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Author: Adolf K. Y. Ng
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317631307
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
As key links in transportation and supply chains, the effect of climate change on seaports has broad implications for the development prospects of the global economy. However, the picture is very uncertain because the impacts of climate change will be felt very differently around the world, both positively and negatively. This book addresses the need for quality theoretical analysis, highly innovative assessment methodologies, and insightful empirical global experiences so as to identify the best international practices, planning and appropriate policies to effectively adapt to, develop resilience, and indeed benefit from, the impacts posed by climate change on transportation and supply chains. This book comprises of theories, methodologies and case studies from five continents (Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Oceania) addressing climate change and the adaptation planning of ports and transportation infrastructures. With reputable contributors from academic, policymaking and professional sectors, it critically analyses the recent attempts by ports in establishing adaptation plans and strategies so to enhance ports and other transportation infrastructures’ resilience to the climate change risks. This is the first book of its kind to focus on climate change adaptation for ports. It offers useful and comprehensive guidance to senior policymakers, industrial practitioners and researchers who are eager to understand the dynamics between climate change, adaptation planning of ports and transportation infrastructures.

Author: Transportation Research Board
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309150353
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
In reviewing proposals for transportation research programs as part of reauthorizing the federal surface transportation program, the Transportation Research Board recognized a gap: no proposals explicitly addressed research to mitigate GHG emissions and energy consumption attributable to passenger and freight travel or to adapt to climate change. A Transportation Research Program for Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change and Conserving Energy is the product of a study to suggest research programs to fill this and other perceived gaps. Specifically, this book identifies research needs with regard to policies and strategies relating to the use of the transportation system and to assist infrastructure owners in adapting to climate change; focuses on research programs that could provide guidance to officials at all levels responsible for policies that affect the use of surface transportation infrastructure and its operation, maintenance, and construction; and aims to help officials begin to adapt the infrastructure to climate changes that are already occurring or that are expected to occur in the next several decades.