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Submit now to first International Conference on Surface Transportation System Resilience to Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events

Conference to be held at the National Academy of Sciences Building, 2101 Constitution Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C, USA from September 16-18th 2015. Click on the link at the bottom to download a flyer about this.

Call for Presentations

About the Conference:
Climate change and extreme weather events have emerged as significant concerns for the transportation sector around the world.  This international conference supported by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Federal Transit Administration will provide transportation agencies with information on emerging best practices and state of the art research results to assist in their ability to adapt to the potential impacts of climate change and extreme weather events.  These approaches support effective decision making by State departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, Federal land management agencies, transit and other transportation agencies to mainstream consideration of climate change and extreme weather resilience in all aspects of the transportation sector, including planning and programming, capital improvements, and operations and maintenance.  The conference will promote international dialogue on research, implementation, and lessons learned on this important topic, with benefits that are expected to extend beyond the transportation sector.

The program will include plenary sessions with leading subject matter experts, technical discussions on tools and practices, and opportunities for informal exchange of information.  Practitioners representing government, private sector, academia, business, and non-profit organizations from around the world are invited to participate in this conference.

Topics for Presentations:
This call invites submissions of abstracts to be considered for presentations during plenary and break-out sessions.  Presentations are invited on the following topic areas as they relate to all aspects of climate change and extreme weather resilience and adaptation in surface transportation:

• Climate Science and Data.  Presentations are invited on topics related to the development of climate change information specifically designed to inform transportation decision making.  Topics of interest include: 1) methods for developing and applying climate change information that practitioners can readily use;  2) the identification of key analyses, decision points, and operational thresholds for which climate change information is relevant in transportation decision making, including  engineering, environmental, operations, emergency management, maintenance, planning, and asset management functions, among others; 3) examples of how transportation infrastructure applications have benefited from co-production of knowledge with climate scientists and translators of climate science for those applications; 4) expected improvements / next steps in methods to develop readily useable climate projections relevant to transportation decision making; 4) examples of methods that combine historic information (such as historic precipitation, observed temperatures, or road-weather information) with climate projections; 5) examples of how climate information has been used in road weather management systems.
• Planning for Resilience.  Presentations should address mainstreaming climate resilience in transportation planning and programming at the project level or at a systems level.  Presentations could address climate-specific planning issues facing transportation agencies and implementing entities at the regional, state, and local level.  Topics may include integrating climate change into long range transportation plans and risk-based asset management, or the need for new institutional arrangements, data collection, and decision support systems to improve resiliency.  Topics covering resiliency planning for capital investments (e.g. mode, asset location, design standards), and operations and maintenance (e.g. planning/budgeting/interagency coordination for extreme events and disaster recovery) will be considered.  The presentations will provide an opportunity to showcase exemplary case studies, new tools, metrics, and organizational improvements geared toward enhanced resilience.
• Project Level Adaptation.  Presentations could explore how climate resilience and adaptation strategies get incorporated into the design process and into specific projects.  Topics in this area may include: refinement of climate information to be useable in design; embracing  climate uncertainty in design; study of design criteria vs. true failure mechanisms; behavior of assets under single and multiple climate stressors as well as traditional stressors such as age, condition, traffic, land use, etc.; examinations of existing resilience or lack thereof; incorporation of threshold, triggers and other time-sensitive flexibilities into designs; and examples of comprehensive design procedures that incorporate climate resilience.  Other topics could include assessment of climate threats and opportunities to improve resilience in environmental reviews, incorporation of climate change impacts analysis and resilient design requirements in post-disaster recovery, as well as the use of disaster recovery funds to rebuild resilient transportation assets.
• Resilience in Operations and Maintenance Activities.  Transportation agency operations, maintenance, and emergency managers are on the front line when extreme weather strikes.  As storms intensify, extreme events become more frequent, and weather norms change, how are transportation O&M groups responding?  Presentations could address lessons learned, best practices, new challenges, advanced technology and communication strategies related to resilience in transportation operations and maintenance.  Examples include case studies from recent events, using road weather information to respond to extreme weather events, improving system management and performance during extreme weather, resilience in reconstruction following extreme weather events, evolving asset management strategies, and planning for operations as part of climate change.
• International and Cross¬-Cutting Initiatives.  Presentations are invited that focus on issues that require co-operative solutions because they cross borders, sectors, or fields of technical inquiry.  Climate change impacts across boundaries of lower and upper tier local governments, state/province or national governments, or privately and publicly held land. Close cooperation and sharing of information across boundaries and fields of inquiry is critical to developing common and practical approaches among climate researchers, transportation planners, designers and engineers, risk managers and emergency planners.  Topics could also include the nexus between mitigation and adaptation in the transportation and other sectors and the incorporation of resilience into broader policies affecting transportation decision-making, such as local land-use decisions.  The conference provides an opportunity to showcase research with international application for both developed and developing countries.
• Resilience Tools and Techniques.  Other topics for presentation could include techniques and tools for evaluating and improving transportation system resilience, such as defining asset inventory and criticality, developing future climate and extreme weather scenarios, estimating damage and losses, benefit-cost analysis of adaptation strategies, and education and workforce planning.

Format of Abstracts:
Abstracts must be in English and include name, affiliation, and contact information (email) for the corresponding presenter. Information about all co-authors must also be provided. To be considered for presentation abstracts should be limited to 500 words and must:

• Identify which of the topic areas the presentation will address;
• Demonstrate that the work to be presented is sufficiently advanced beyond untested new ideas or early work in progress. Consolidated results of recent projects or studies are preferred.

To Submit an Abstract:
You may submit an abstract at the following link: http://precis2.preciscentral.com/Link.aspx?ID=7C444834DC6EDDDA  or you can find more information at http://www.trb.org/Calendar/Blurbs/170418.aspx.

Review of Abstracts:
All abstracts will be reviewed by a technical selection committee. 

Deadlines and Dates:
Submission of proposed presentations (abstracts):                   February 13, 2015
Notice of acceptance of presentations:                                          May 22, 2015
Commitment by author to present:                                                  June 19, 2015

Comments: 13th February 2015 abstract deadline for TRB International Resilience Conference