Adaptation Planning and Hazard Mitigation for Interdependent Infrastructure Systems to Enhance Urban Resilience Under Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change and natural hazards have created multiple impacts on human settlements. Urban planning and design are effective tools in dealing with climate adaptation and mitigation issues. However, climate risk and its impacts are multiscale and complex due to interdependence between urban infrastructure systems. Identifying adaptation strategies to cope with these impacts requires planners to understand potential interdependent and interrelated consequences of infrastructure failure under natural hazards, and evaluate cascading and cumulative effects of climate change. This article discussed opportunities and challenges to incorporate interdependent social and physical infrastructure systems in the adaptation planning and hazard mitigation process, including climate hazard assessment, adaptation goal identification, adaptation strategy development, and implementation. The availability of urban big data and high computational resources will enable urban planners and decision-makers to better deal with those complex impacts from climate change and natural hazards. Successful adaptation planning and hazard mitigation for interdependent infrastructure systems also needs to solve issues in uncertainties of climate projection, institutional barriers of adaptation, and challenges of urban big data. Potential solutions to these challenges would include cooperation among multi-disciplinary experts, coordination between different levels of governments, and developing the ethical framework for data protection and robust methodologies to detect and reduce data bias.

Keywords

Adaptation Planning / Hazard Mitigation / Interdependent Infrastructure System / Climate Change / Urban Resilience / Big Data

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2021 Higher Education Press