Climate effects on US infrastructure: the economics of adaptation for rail, roads, and coastal development

James E. Neumann (), Paul Chinowsky, Jacob Helman, Margaret Black, Charles Fant, Kenneth Strzepek and Jeremy Martinich
Additional contact information
James E. Neumann: Industrial Economics, Inc.
Paul Chinowsky: Resilient Analytics, Inc. and University of Colorado
Jacob Helman: Resilient Analytics, Inc. and University of Colorado
Margaret Black: Industrial Economics, Inc.
Charles Fant: Industrial Economics, Inc.
Kenneth Strzepek: Industrial Economics, Inc.
Jeremy Martinich: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Climatic Change, 2021, vol. 167, issue 3, No 18, 23 pages

Abstract: Abstract Changes in temperature, precipitation, sea level, and coastal storms will likely increase the vulnerability of infrastructure across the USA. Using models that analyze vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation, this paper estimates impacts to railroad, roads, and coastal properties under three infrastructure management response scenarios: No Adaptation; Reactive Adaptation, and Proactive Adaptation. Comparing damages under each of these potential responses provides strong support for facilitating effective adaptation in these three sectors. Under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario and without adaptation, overall costs are projected to range in the $100s of billions annually by the end of this century. The first (reactive) tier of adaptation action, however, reduces costs by a factor of 10, and the second (proactive) tier reduces total costs across all three sectors to the low $10s of billions annually. For the rail and road sectors, estimated costs for Reactive and Proactive Adaptation scenarios capture a broader share of potential impacts, including selected indirect costs to rail and road users, and so are consistently about a factor of 2 higher than prior estimates. The results highlight the importance of considering climate risks in infrastructure planning and management.

Keywords: Rail; Roads; Coastal development; Infrastructure; Proactive adaptation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-021-03179-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:167:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-021-03179-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03179-w

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().