Indicator-based vulnerability screening for improving infrastructure resilience to climate change risks

To understand and manage risks from climate change and extreme weather, infrastructure designers, owners, and operators need to know where vulnerabilities exist in the system, including how asset-specific vulnerabilities relate to system-wide vulnerabilities. This is harder than it seems: practitioners are faced with several barriers to effectively assess vulnerability, including the resources and time required for detailed studies, limitations in climate and asset information, and challenges in translating climate information at an appropriate level of detail to inform investment, design, and maintenance decisions. This paper presents an indicator-based vulnerability screening approach and discusses practical steps for data collection, scoring and weighting, and validation of results. The benefits of this approach are that it leverages existing information on climate and assets to save time and cost, and relies on metrics that can be applied as part of benchmarking, performance measurement and evaluation, risk assessment, asset management, and prioritization strategies. Moreover, the paper discusses efforts underway to leverage this approach, applications for mainstreaming climate change considerations in infrastructure decision-making in developing and developed nations, and limitations of this approach that are ripe for further research.