Scenario-based Climate Change Risk Analysis for Transportation Infrastructure using GIS

摘要

The potential impacts of climate change on transportation infrastructure have been receivingattention in recent years. Risk analysis using Geographic Information System (GIS) is anespecially useful and increasingly common approach to investigating the potential impacts ofclimate change on infrastructure. This is because climate change effects are likely to occur inconjunction with other, geographic specific, impacts such as storm surge and traffic operations,whose vulnerability can be most effectively quantified using these GIS-based tools. Todemonstrate the efficacy of these tools, this paper presents a scenario-based risk analysisapproach to investigate the impacts of climate change on transportation infrastructure inHampton Roads, Virginia. This paper first investigates the climate change effects in the studysite to develop representative climate change scenarios. Next, a GIS-based evaluation oftransportation infrastructure vulnerability to sea-level rise and storm surge is formed bycombining the GIS dataset with the results from the Sea, Lake and Overland Surges fromHurricanes (SLOSH) model. Last, a GIS-based risk map is generated by the proposed risk modelunder three developed climate change threat scenarios. The results show the City of VirginiaBeach is at high risk in all climate change scenarios due to climate change events, high level oftransportation activity, and density of transportation facilities. The risk map—a visualization ofthe risk model—can assist transportation planners and decision-makers in determining assetpriority to allocate their resources with respect to emergency preparation and reaction.