Planning visit for US-Australia Collaborative Research on Climate-Related Infrastructure Adaptation for Natural Hazards

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1050443LiThis award supports a planning visit to enable Professor Yue Li at Michigan Technological University to meet with Professor Mark Steward, Director of the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability in Australian, Professor Garry Willgoose, Director, Centre for Climate Impact Management at the University of Newcastle in Australia and Dr. Xiaoming Wang at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Climate Adaptation Flagship and Sustainable Ecosystems. The goal of the project is to support the development of a collaborative research partnership between the U.S. and Australia for climate-related infrastructure adaptation for resistance to natural hazards. Evidence suggests that natural hazards such as hurricanes (cyclones), snow and heavy precipitation, and flood are expected to change in frequency and intensity with the smallest rise in temperature resulting from climate change. These extreme events can result in severe damage to infrastructure, including buildings, roads, bridges and utilities, especially because current design practice assumes a stationary process and no time-dependent changes to hazard occurrence probabilities. The collaborative research will develop a long-term partnership with numerous research opportunities for U.S. early-career faculty and students. Specifically, it will 1) advance understanding of risks due to climate change that accommodate the uncertainty of climate change and establish the relationship between loss estimation and the changing patterns of natural hazards, and 2) introduce new opportunities for engineering-socioeconomic collaborations on climate risk assessment and develop a decision framework for economic assessment of climate adaptation measures. The results of this research will help to facilitate sustainability-oriented long term planning and short term disaster-response measures/strategies and provide new, research-based information to inform the decision making process for cost-effective climate change adaptation strategies. There is sufficient overlap of interests between researchers in the U.S. and Australia to indicate that they can successfully pursue the activities proposed, and that the interaction will benefit both sides. In addition, the involvement of two U.S. graduate students will enable them to gain a valuable international perspective and insight. They will also participate in discussions on future collaborative activities with the researchers.