Climate Change Impact Assessment for Surface Transportation in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska

摘要

This report is built on several significant reports and projects that have been recently published. In 2008, the Transportation Research Board released the Special Report 290: Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation, which primarily focused on the consequences of climate change for U.S. transportation infrastructure and operations. The report also offers recommendations for both research and actions that can be taken to prepare for climate change. A similar study released by U.S. Department of Transportation, Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Transportation Systems and Infrastructure: Gulf Coast Study, Phase I, explores the vulnerabilities of transportation systems in the Gulf Coast region to potential changes in weather patterns and related impacts, as well as the effect of natural land subsidence and other environmental factors in the region. The area examined by the study includes 48 contiguous counties in four states, running from Galveston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama. In addition to these national reports, there are a variety studies that look at the scenarios of future climate for the Pacific Northwest. Most notably are the Climate Impacts Group's Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment and the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute's Oregon Climate Assessment Report, which developed climate change scenarios for Oregon and Washington State. The objective of this research project was to conduct a preliminary vulnerability assessment of the risks and vulnerabilities climate change poses to the surface transportation infrastructure system in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska region. The report: (1) synthesizes data to characterize the region's climate, (2) identifies potential impacts on the regional transportation system, (3) identifies critical infrastructure vulnerable to climate change impacts, and (4) provides recommendations for more detailed analysis and research needs as appropriate to support managing risks and opportunities to adapt multimodal surface transportation infrastructure to climate change impacts.