A review of climate change induced flood impacts and adaptation of coastal infrastructure systems in the United States

Abstract

Climate change-induced sea level rise, storm surge and extreme precipitation in coastal regions of the United States (US) are affecting coastal infrastructure systems, including transportation, defense, energy, buildings, water supply, wastewater, stormwater and shoreline infrastructure. The interdependencies among these systems further worsen the climate change risks affecting infrastructure reliability and resiliency. Evaluating the current state of scientific research focus on climate change-induced coastal flood risk and the adaptation of US coastal infrastructure systems helps in understanding the current progress in critical coastal infrastructure adaptation and guides future research in the necessary direction. In this review, we synthesize the scientific literature through a metadata analysis within the scope of US coastal infrastructure system risk due to climate change-induced recurrent flooding in seven key coastal infrastructure systems across different coastal regions, namely, New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast and Gulf, and the West Coast. Our review found that coastal stormwater and shoreline protection systems and transportation systems are the most studied, while water supply and defense systems are the least studied topics. Over the last decade of scientific contributions, there has been a distinct shift in focus from understanding and quantifying coastal flood risks towards adapting coastal infrastructure systems. The majority of the studies are based in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Gulf, while national scale studies are very limited. Although critical to resilient coastal infrastructure systems, the consideration of interdependencies or studies expanding across multiple infrastructure systems are limited. Out of the forward-looking studies that consider future climate scenarios, 39% considered only long-term (year 2100) scenarios, while 27% considered all short-, medium- and long-term scenarios. Considering finite resources and finite infrastructure life span, the ultimate focus on the end of the century climate scenarios extending beyond most of the existing infrastructure’s design life is a challenge to adaptation planning.