Michelle Oswald

Climate Change Adaptation Tool for Transportation: Mid-Atlantic Region Case Study

Transportation has contributed to climate change and will most likely be impacted by changes in sea level, temperature, precipitation, and wind, for example. As the risk of climate change impacts become more imminent, pressure for adaptation within transportation agencies to address these impacts continues to rise. The most logical strategy is to integrate consideration of adaptation projects into the long-range transportation planning (LRTP) process. To do this, tools and experience are needed to assist transportation agencies. The Climate Change Adaptation Tool for Transportation (CCATT) is a step-by-step method to evaluate climate change scenarios and impacts, inventory at-risk existing and proposed infrastructure, and assess mitigation practices to identify supporting adaptation efforts. This paper focuses on the application of CCATT to the Mid-Atlantic region using a case study on the Wilmington Area Planning Council (WILMAPCO), the Metropolitan Planning Organization for northern Delaware. The results of the application and case study demonstrate the importance of climate change adaptation practices in long-range transportation planning.

Measuring Infrastructure Performance: Development of a National Infrastructure Index

Infrastructure systems are the foundation for economic growth and productivity. Business and commerce depend on roadways, waterways, pipelines, electricity lines, and broadband connections to transport goods, gain access, provide services, communicate, and efficiently function. Despite the importance of infrastructure, empirical economists have been hindered by the lack of infrastructure performance measures. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is supporting the development of a national index to measure and understand infrastructure performance. In contrast to established infrastructure assessments which rely on dollars spent or counting highway miles, this index applies a rigorous, repeatable, and universal methodology to quantify infrastructure performance. This article documents the methodology for developing a national infrastructure index and the application for one sector: transportation. The integration of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) into the methodology as a mechanism to weight performance indicators is discussed as well as the challenges faced in constructing a Transportation Performance Index.

Capturing Transportation Infrastructure Performance: Data Availability, Needs, and Challenges

Performance measures are used to communicate the operation of the transportation infrastructure, to build and enhance credibility and accountability, to guide investment, and to support budget and program proposals. Although considerable data are collected on a regular basis, these data have significant limitations and pose challenges for performance management. Experience in assembling the data for an infrastructure index for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is drawn on to describe the data publicly available to serve as indicators of transportation infrastructure performance, address the shortcomings in the available data, and present the challenges encountered in using the existing data and likely to be encountered in developing new data sources and resources. The transportation index, part of the infrastructure index project (which includes broadband, water, and energy), aims to develop a rigorous, quantitative, and repeatable methodology to capture the performance of infrastructure in order to connect this performance with economic health and prosperity. Four barriers to developing comprehensive performance measures are focused on—varying levels of data aggregation, missing and erroneous data, prediction, and institutional issues—and a summary of data needs is given.