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National Academy of Sciences Building,
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., USA

Call for Abstracts
Abstract are no longer being accepted for this event.

We are pleased to announce this call for abstracts for the Transportation Resilience 2023:  3^rd International Conference on Extreme Weather and Climate Change Challenges (TR2023).

This call for abstracts is intended for all modes of domestic and international transportation systems addressing and evaluating resilience projects and programs.  Share your successes and challenges in building a transportation network and system that is more resilient to hazards caused by extreme weather and climate change. We are seeking abstracts for workshops, panel discussions, technical sessions and poster presentations that share information on case studies, applied research, measures and tools, and innovative approaches to evaluate and quantify resilience; manage systems and enterprise-level resilience; prioritize resilience investments; and absorb the return on investment from resilient approaches and their equitable distribution in the transportation system.  Our target audience includes but not limited to transportation agency practitioners, researchers, climate scientists, consultants, and project managers from around the world.

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is organizing this conference with support from the US Department of Transportation and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). This conference builds on the successes of the first conference held in 2015, the second conference in 2019 (TR2019), and the 2018 Transportation Resilience Innovations Summit and Exchange (Transportation RISE).

TR2023 will provide practical information on emerging best practices and state of the art research results used by planners, policy-makers and designers based on the following three themes:

• Resilience Planning and Projects
• Resilient Recovery
• Resilience Processes and Programs  

To Submit an Abstract:
To submit an abstract, please click on the Submit image below or navigate to the following site: https://trb.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/104/home. 

Abstract Details

Abstract Types

This call invites you to submit an abstract of no more than 500 words for a panel discussion, workshop, technical session, or a poster presentation by Friday, April 28, 2023, 23:59 ET (UTC-5).

General Topic Areas

Outlined below are the general topic areas of this call for abstracts  including several guiding questions.  Nevertheless submissions may also include other aspects of natural hazards, extreme weather resilience, and climate adaptation in surface transportation. Submissions from local, tribal, state, national, and international perspectives are welcome and encouraged. Our focus is on all transportation modes, which includes aviation, roadways, freight, rail, port and transit systems and their corresponding infrastructure:

Resilience Adaptive Planning and Projects

• How are other resilience planning efforts (such as regional or community resilience planning, local comprehensive planning, land use planning, hazard mitigation planning) being integrated into project design?
• How are transportation agencies identifying, screening, and prioritizing transportation resilience projects during the planning to capital programming phase?
• What approaches and frameworks are being used to integrate resilience into the project development and/or design process? What scientific data, engineering principals, design guidelines, or construction standards are being used to integrate resilience?
• What are some funding and financing strategies that agencies are using for adaptation planning and projects, and what challenges or barriers have agencies encountered (e.g., for US jurisdictions, lessons from utilizing PROTECT or other new federal funding sources)?
• What examples are available to showcase completed projects that incorporated   resilience, especially those that considered future climate adaptation information?
• With resilience approaches and practices becoming mainstreamed, what metrics and measures are being developed to track and monitor resilience activities? What advances have been made in climate projections and downscaling and what are the implications for practitioners?

Resilient Recovery

• How do agencies balance project development management practices, 23 CFR Part 667 requirements for evaluating repeated emergency relief funding, and integration of resilience improvement? 
• What agency leadership plans, procedures, tools, and methods are being employed to expedite natural disaster recovery and ensure consideration of resilience?
• What economic justification or cost benefit analysis tools and methods can be employed to assess economic, risk, or equity tradeoffs for building back more resiliently post-disaster?
• How are transportation agencies using disaster modeling tools to understand cascading impacts across sectors and support asset prioritization and recovery management?
• How can post-disaster data be collected and used to enhance recovery, as well as longer-term transportation system planning and project development?
• What examples are available that reflect an equitable distribution of resilience recovery efforts?
• What good examples exist of disaster recovery planning enhancing transportation infrastructure preparedness/prevention projects and design?

 Resilience Processes and Programs

• How are agencies institutionalizing or mainstreaming resilience? 
• How are agencies selecting and utilizing climate projections to inform transportation planning, risk-based asset management, or surface transportation project development?
• How are agencies incorporating resilience into its workforce at their agencies?  What training is being utilized?
• How are government agencies, the private sector, and the public – especially communities that have often been affected by but left out of transportation decision-making processes in the past – cooperating and collaborating to improve resilience and adapt for the future?
• How are agencies integrating resilience into operations and maintenance activities?
• What advancements have been made to integrate downscaled climate data sets into the transportation planning, programming, or project development process?
• When is retreat or relocation an acceptable option and how have agencies made these determinations?
• What examples are available that reflect the methods used to customize a suite of climate models to a specific geographic location, corridor, or climate data grid in connection with a transportation project?
• How can we best communicate climate science and data to influence cultural and institutional changes?
• How can transportation agencies better understand sector interdependencies and improve cross-sector collaboration to increase overall community resilience?
• How are resilient projects presented and how has acceptance of the project been achieved? 

Submission Format
Proposals must be written in English and include name, affiliation, and contact information (email) for the corresponding presenter. Information about all co-authors must also be provided. To be considered for inclusion in the conference program, submittals should be limited to 500 words and must:

• Identify which topic area(s) the presentation will address; and
• Demonstrate that the work to be presented is sufficiently advanced beyond untested new ideas or early work in progress. Consolidated results of recent projects or studies are preferred.

See sample abstract submittal.

What are the Benefits of Being a Presenter?
TR2023 presenters receive valuable professional exposure and networking opportunities at this gathering of national and international experts participating in the TRB, AASHTO, and USDOT societies and networks. We will promote your name, credentials, and organization on the conference website and conference program. Presenters also receive a reduced registration rate.

How are Proposals Selected?
Experts on a technical selection committee who favor end-user perspectives, innovative ideas, applied science and case studies, and timeliness of subject and relevancy to the conference themes identified above will review all abstracts.