Two Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) institutes, the Climate Change Science Institute (CCSI) and the Urban Dynamics Institute (UDI), have joined forces to address one of the most pressing problems facing midsize cities today: how best to allocate scarce resources to deal with climate change. The solution they have devised is a unique, web-based, decision-support tool, the Urban Climate Adaptation Tool, or Urban-CAT.
And change is coming; in some cases, it is already here. For example, the western United States is experiencing more frequent and severe droughts, forcing cities to ration water. Conversely, heavy downpours are causing flooding in many locales, forcing city planners to develop flood mitigation strategies. Hurricanes now appear to be traveling up the eastern coast more frequently so that northern cities are seeing their effects. In short, the exception has become the norm. Climatologists and Earth-system modelers are saying that these types of extreme weather events are going to be more frequent and more powerful in the future—and more costly. The challenge in helping cities plan for this type of change, according to Omitaomu, who works for both CCSI and UDI, is that most climate models don’t provide enough information at a usable scale for local planners to make decisions. This information is critical to understand what adaptation measures need to be put in place to alleviate repercussions from some of the impending climate changes such as rising sea levels, increased rainfall, or drought. |
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The screen capture shown below of the Urban-CAT tool highlights perviousness and tree canopy in the city of Knoxville.
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The Urban-CAT platform addresses this by coupling climate projections with socioeconomic and infrastructure data at scales useful for urban planning. The platform also provides connectivity to multiple data sources for comparison and assessment of local project scenarios under different climate conditions. Finally, the project team has developed a set of urban resilience indicators to be used in assessing resilience and in monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of selected adaptation actions in reducing risk.
Changing storm-water runoff amounts and patterns have been identified by various sources as among the likely impacts of a changing climate for many cities, including Knoxville. For the prototype Urban-CAT tool, the team is focusing on storm water runoff and using green infrastructures such as trees to alleviate urban flooding and costly storm-water management. This simple yet elegant solution has multiple benefits beyond the immediate one of flood control, including health benefits, air quality benefits, and canopy benefits. In addition, water quality benefits are achieved through reducing the amount of impervious surface, which helps minimize runoff (carrying dirt and oil), ultimately decreasing the need to use chemicals for water treatment (a health and a cost-savings benefit). Planting trees also minimizes the amount of cement used, reducing the carbon footprint from cement plants, which is quite large.