We have to include those in our designs and our constructions."Ĭonsideration of the effects of climate change on infrastructure is not limited to the federal government. That means that we have to consider things like the changing frequency of droughts or floods or storm events or those kinds of natural disasters of different types, and we have to be prepared for them. "We need to be concerned about things that impact the public. " potentially puts the health, safety, and well-being of the public at risk," White says.
"Mainstreaming climate change adaptation means that it will be considered at every step in the project lifecycle for all USACE projects, both existing and planned?to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance the resilience of our water-resource infrastructure," the policy statement reads. In addition to President Obama's 2009 Executive Order 13514, which requires federal agencies to mitigate climate change through the improvement of energy and water conservation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, a policy for "mainstreaming" climate change adaptation has been adopted by the Corps. It also brought together faculty and administrators from engineering schools and colleges engineering societies federal officials state, city, and county infrastructure officials science museum personnel and informal educators engineering and science ethics scholars and STEM educators.įor the Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Katrina was the wakeup call to begin talking seriously about climate change, according to Senior Lead for Global and Climate Change Kathleen White. The workshop explored actual cases of engineered systems impacted by climate change, public policy implications, educational interventions in postsecondary and informal settings, and societal and ethical considerations in preparing America's infrastructure for the impacts of climate change. That first phase of the partnership's work ended in January with a capstone workshop titled "Climate Change and America's Infrastructure: Engineering, Social, and Policy Challenges," held at Arizona State University. To address the problem, the partnership began forming a national network to enhance education on the subject of climate change and engineering. "We thought that was a problem and, in particular, what we thought was basically the biggest vulnerabilities we're going to face as a society are ones that are going to arise as a consequence of our engineered systems and the vulnerabilities in those engineered systems." The proposal for the partnership was put together two years ago because so little was being done about the effects of climate change on engineering, says Clark Miller, associate director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University and codirector of the partnership's original proposal. The partnership is focused on three themes: climate impacts on engineered systems and their adaptation, changes in engineered systems required to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and the creation of novel technological systems to engineer the Earth's climate system. NAE's Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society is one such group leading the Climate Change Educational Partnership. The Army Corps of Engineers, the National Academy of Engineering, engineering firms, communities, and others are taking action. "For example, building codes and landscaping ordinances will likely need to be updated not only for energy efficiency, but also to conserve water supplies, protect against insects that spread disease, reduce susceptibility to heat stress, and improve protection against extreme events." " will be disruptive to society because our institutions and infrastructure have been designed for the relatively stable climate of the past, not the changing one of the present and future," the report says. "I think what you're seeing now is a recognition, in the face of these extreme events, that this topic needs consideration," says Rachelle Hollander, director of the NAE's Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society.Ī report by the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee released in January for public review notes the implications for the built environment and other aspects of society.
While higher property values and increasing populations in areas vulnerable to weather are contributing to this rise, the majority of scientists agree climate change is also making extremes in weather more likely. weather disasters that have caused $1 billion or more in damages when compared to the previous 15 years, according to information from the National Climatic Data Center and the Department of Commerce. In the last 15 years, there has been an 85.7% increase in the number of U.S.