Standardized Storm Water Infrastructure Design and Planning Protocols for Capacity Limited Communities and Climate Change Uncertainty

目前纳入气候变化(CC)的工程设计标准允许在雨水基础设施设计中相对简单和廉价地将CC考虑在内。然而，流域中的暴雨响应高度依赖于CC影响的其他因素，这些因素增加了设计考虑的复杂性。为了更全面地考虑潜在影响，并考虑到设计参数的相关不确定性，需要制定新的标准。已经为具有弹性的基础设施开发了各种方法，其中包括这种复杂性，并可以解决与预测未来相关的相对较高的不确定性。大多数方法从风险管理的角度出发，因此适应CC需要在考虑的时间段内准确地描述气候，试图确定规划最有可能的未来。然后，设计依赖于准确和精确的气候预测和复杂的建模工作。然而，加拿大各地的大多数小社区的能力有限，限制了综合方法的使用。这排除了可以纳入规划和设计过程的许多或大多数类型和水平的知识。即使在有限的能力和相对较高的不确定性水平下，也必须做出决定，必须推进气候适应规划和基础设施设计。因此，除了定量的不确定性分析外，设计标准还应考虑由于社区参与相关专业知识和技术的能力和资源有限而产生的定性不确定性。这项研究计划旨在改进雨水基础设施设计的标准和协议，考虑到利益相关者资金和技术资源的限制，这些资源可以解释来自一系列来源的不确定性。这些来源包括观测数据的不确定性、气候变化预测、流域模型、专家解释以及市政当局利用人力和财政资源的能力。这项研究提出了一种改进的基础设施规划和设计方法，其中包括在设计过程的几个阶段使用决策支持环境中的情景分析的社区输入和反馈。气候变化适应可以通过为不确定性进行设计更好地实现，方法是允许社区设想未来的情景，这些情景可以逐步接近并得到改善，因为潜在的结果更有信心，不确定性更小。这种新颖的方法结合了自然和建筑环境的多个尺度，侧重于针对不确定性的设计，而不是不确定性。更新后的标准考虑到了气候变化的地区差异，可以用来改进整个加拿大的设计标准。这将有助于改变土木工程做法，使社区参与进来，并发展可持续和适应气候变化的基础设施。

Current engineering design standards that incorporate climate change (CC) allow for a relatively simple and inexpensive inclusion of CC considerations into storm water infrastructure design. However, storm water responses in a watershed are highly dependent on other factors affected by CC that increase the complexity of design considerations. In order to allow for a more complete inclusion of potential impacts and an accounting for the relevant uncertainty of design parameters, new standards need to be developed. Various approaches have been developed for resilient infrastructure that includes this complexity and can address relatively high levels of uncertainty associated with predicting the future. Most methods take a risk management perspective, whereby adapting to CC requires an accurate description of climate over the time period of consideration that attempts to identify a most likely future for planning. Design then relies on accurate and precise climate predictions and complex modeling efforts. However most small communities throughout Canada have limited capacities that constrain the use of comprehensive methods. This excludes many or most types and levels of knowledge that can be incorporated into the planning and design process. Even with limited capacity and relatively high levels of uncertainty, decisions must be made, and climate adaptation planning and infrastructure design must move forward. Therefore, in addition to quantitative uncertainty analysis, design standards should consider qualitative uncertainty due to limited capacity and resources of a community to engage the relevant expertise and technologies. This research program aims to improve standards and protocols for the design of storm water infrastructure, given stakeholder limitations of financial and technical resources that can account for uncertainty from a range of sources. These sources include uncertainty from observed data, climate change projections, watershed models, expert interpretation, and the capacity of municipalities to engage human and financial resources. This research proposes a modified approach to planning and design of infrastructure that includes community input and feedback at several stages in the design process using scenario analysis in a decision support context. Climate change adaptation can be better achieved by designing for uncertainty by allowing communities to envision future scenarios that can be approached incrementally and improved as potential outcomes are known with more confidence and less uncertainty. This novel approach incorporates multiple scales of the natural and built environment with a focus on design for uncertainty, not with uncertainty. The updated standards account for regional differences in climate change and can be used to improve design standards throughout Canada. This will help transform civil engineering practices to engage communities and develop sustainable and climate change resilient infrastructure.