Applying Climate Change Information to Hydrologic and Hydraulic Design of Transportation Infrastructure

Transportation hydraulic engineers are being asked to account for global climate change within hydrologic and hydraulic (H&H) design practice. Current H&H design procedures stipulate use of historical data that are assumed to represent a stationary process. Climate change introduces non-stationary risks such as sea level and temperature rise, and changes in timing and distribution of precipitation, snowpack, and snowmelt. Failure to account for such non-stationary risks may compromise the operational characteristics of existing and future transportation infrastructure. Climate change scientists employ outputs from a cascade of models to develop regional scenarios representing these non-stationary phenomena that are not associated with specific probabilities. Existing guidance for H&H design does not provide methods to incorporate such information. Collaborative efforts and a common set of terms and definitions between climate change scientists, hydrologists, hydraulic engineers, and coastal engineers are essential to harmonize climate change inputs and H&H design practice. Incorporating the results of climate models may have large cost implications for future infrastructure. For example, overestimates of the magnitude of peak flows can result in costly oversizing of drainage infrastructure, while underestimates might leave infrastructure vulnerable and the resultant flooding impacts on surrounding lands and structures inadequately addressed. It is often questioned if the magnitude of change in hydrologic and hydraulic inputs due to climate change are within the range of uncertainties accounted for in the current state of practice and how the uncertainties vary for the design of various hydraulic features ranging from stormwater management facilities to bridges, given that they are typically evaluated for varying extreme events. Furthermore, accounting for climate change in hydraulic design is complicated by additional non-stationary processes arising from urbanization and other land cover changes. Research is needed to provide hydraulic engineers with practical tools to (1) account for the effects of climate change in hydraulic design where appropriate and (2) justify when such changes are not warranted for a project of a particular type or scale. The objective of this research was to develop a design guide of national scope to provide hydraulic engineers with the tools needed to amend practice to account for climate change.

• Record URL:
  http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=4046

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $750000
• Contract Numbers:

  Project 15-61

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

  444 North Capitol Street, NW, Suite 225
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  National Cooperative Highway Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Project Managers:

  Harrigan, Edward

• Performing Organizations:

  Kilgore Consulting and Management

  ,    
• Principal Investigators:

  Kilgore, Roger

• Start Date: 20160920
• Expected Completion Date: 20191130
• Actual Completion Date: 20191130
• Source Data: RiP Project 40210

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Climate change; Cooperation; Design practices; Engineering; Environmental impacts; Hydraulics; Hydrology; Infrastructure; Service life
• Subject Areas: Design; Environment; Highways; Hydraulics and Hydrology;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01572389
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project 15-61
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: Aug 7 2015 1:01AM