Climate information use in transportation planning: a survey of Metropolitan Planning Organizations

Climate change and its potential to impact transportation systems poses urgent challenges for sustainability and societal well-being, emphasizing a need to plan to reduce transportation infrastructure’s vulnerability to impacts such as sea level rise, extreme weather events, and increased erosion. Previous research has focused on document analysis and case studies and has highlighted the importance of including transportation professional needs in regard to understanding how transportation professionals use climate science. Through direct inclusion of transportation professional perspectives, this paper aims to fill the gaps in understanding about the use of climate information in transportation planning. To obtain data about local and regional level transportation infrastructure planning and the importance of increased funding on the demand for climate information, we conducted an online survey of regional transportation practitioners (n = 105) from United States Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs). The survey examined what types of climate-related information these regional planners are using in the context of transportation infrastructure planning, how it is used, and what types of decision support practitioners think would be most useful. We also explore how the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law / Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (BIL/IIJA), alongside other factors, may impact the demand for and use of climate information. We find that information providers need to improve decision support tools so they are (a) easy to use and interpret, (b) include explicit methods for modeling tradeoffs among options, and (c) allow the user to easily identify the impacts of alternative scenarios and decisions. Our data suggest that one of the most obvious ways to increase the use of climate information is to provide continuing education opportunities that empower transportation professionals to understand and use climate information and tools toward resilience goals. Based on responses, we also see opportunities for improved networking to connect transportation professionals with prior climate services experience to those who have less experience.