Session Description
Topic: Resilience Processes & Programs

This Session will introduce four FHWA handbooks that focus on helping State DOTs and MPOs integrate resilience to climate change and extreme weather events into a range of disciplines: geohazards, pavements, metropolitan and statewide planning and asset management. FHWA plans to publish these four documents by Summer 2023.

These handbooks provide tools and methods to help practitioners better address resilience concerns within each discipline. The handbooks are based largely on the results of pilot projects and case studies, peer exchanges, key innovations by our State DOT and MPO partners, recent requirements for addressing natural hazard resilience, and additional analysis of methods to integrate consideration of climate change into State DOT and MPO practice.

The two focused on Geohazards and Pavements include material on how climate change will impact pavements and geohazards, and then introduce methods for considering and addressing future climate change in designing pavements and addressing geohazards and relevant examples. The Geohazards handbook discusses consideration of climate impacts on the intensity, frequency and severity of geohazards and proactive methods for State DOTs and transportation agencies to reduce and mitigate geohazards risk. The Pavement Resilience guidebook describes the state of knowledge, practice, and future research and implementation needs based on (1) key national and international climate documents, (2) a FHWA approach to resilience, (3) the results of an unpublished literature review, and (4) the findings from FHWA-sponsored Peer Exchanges on pavement resilience.

The asset management and planning handbooks are designed to help practitioners pull climate change considerations into a range of planning processes and address requirements to address climate and extreme weather vulnerability. In asset management, the focus is on using the results of vulnerability assessments to inform asset management; the handbook provides ideas and examples on how to address resilience in the core elements of an asset management plan, including risk management and life cycle planning. In planning, the focus is on integrating climate change resilience into transportation agencies’ long-range transportation planning processes; the handbook steps through considerations of how to address resilience in stakeholder engagement, the development of goals, objectives, performance measures and targets, the definition of problems and needs, evaluating solutions, developing transportation plans, developing other studies and work plans, developing the Statewide and metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program , project development, and in monitoring and reporting activities.
We plan to introduce the contents of the handbooks, discuss how to apply them, and discuss relevant examples.

Access the video recording here:
https://vimeo.com/showcase/10851381/video/892753629