Adapting Urban Infrastructure to Climate Change: A Drainage Case Study

Attributes of an effective infrastructure adaptation planning process as well as methods for choosing among adaptation strategies are described. The major attributes include: (1) a vulnerability assessment, (2) proactive adaptation strategies that are implemented over time and space, (3) climate change scenario analysis including climate surprises to handle the uncertainty of the future climate, (4) actions that are robust and/or flexible and adjustable, (5) a planned, progressive approach that ties implementation to critical thresholds of actual climate changes and preserves options for future actions, (6) evaluation with multiple social, economic and environmental criteria, and (7) integration of local stakeholders into the planning process. Multiple methods can be used to generate and evaluate adaptation strategies. A subset of the key attributes is then used in a case study of urban drainage management, which was designed and implemented to illustrate these attributes. It is shown that multicriteria scenario analysis can be effectively used to generate and evaluate alternative adaptation strategies. The identification of when critical thresholds are reached under conditions of climate variability and change is a major research need.