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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15050325/00001
Notes
- Abstract:
- Climate affects the design, construction, safety, operations, and maintenance of transportation
infrastructure and systems. The prospect of a changing climate raises critical questions
regarding how alterations in temperature, precipitation, storm events, and other aspects of
the climate could affect the nation’s roads, airports, rail, transit systems, pipelines, ports,
and waterways. Phase I of this regional assessment of climate change and its potential
impacts on transportation systems addresses these questions for the region of the U.S. central
Gulf Coast between Galveston, Texas and Mobile, Alabama. This region contains
multimodal transportation infrastructure that is critical to regional and national
transportation services.
Historical trends and future climate scenarios were used to establish a context for examining
the potential effects of climate change on all major transportation modes within the
region. Climate changes anticipated during the next 50 to 100 years for the central Gulf
Coast include warming temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and increased storm
intensity. The warming of the oceans and decline of polar ice sheets is expected to accelerate
the rate of sea level rise globally. The effects of sea level rise in most central Gulf
Coast counties will be exacerbated by the sinking of the land surface, which is accounted
for in this assessment.
The significance of these climate factors for transportation systems was assessed. Warming
temperatures are likely to increase the costs of transportation construction, maintenance,
and operations. More frequent extreme precipitation events may disrupt transportation
networks with flooding and visibility problems. Relative sea level rise will make much of
the existing infrastructure more prone to frequent or permanent inundation – 27 percent of
the major roads, 9 percent of the rail lines, and 72 percent of the ports are built on land at or
below 122 cm (4 feet) in elevation. Increased storm intensity may lead to increased service
disruption and infrastructure damage: More than half of the area’s major highways
(64 percent of Interstates; 57 percent of arterials), almost half of the rail miles, 29 airports,
and virtually all of the ports are below 7 m (23 feet) in elevation and subject to flooding
and possible damage due to hurricane storm surge. Consideration of these factors in
today’s transportation decisions and planning processes should lead to a more robust,
resilient, and cost-effective transportation network in the coming decades. ( English )
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- Florida International University
- Rights Management:
- Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the user's responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.
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