Stressors and Infrastructure Resilience

Abstract

Damages from extreme weather events demonstrate current urban infrastructure vulnerabilities. Major stressors that will have the greatest impact on critical infrastructure include more frequent and intense precipitation events, heat waves, coastal flooding, and wildfires. The US energy and transportation systems are major sectors affected by such stressors. These sectors have therefore been organized into the following groups: energy transmission, storage, and distribution infrastructure; transportation; transit and aviation; drinking water and wastewater; flood protection infrastructure; and navigation/ports and harbors. Each sector is examined with respect to potential impacts of climate change, the status of sector resiliency in terms of current needs and climate change adaptation, potential adaptation response or actions to increase sector resiliency, and dependencies and influences on other sectors that may lead to cascading failure.