Virginia Department of Transportation Issues Climate Change Engineering Design Standards
High Rise Bridge in Chesapeake (Virginian Pilot- Stephen Katz)
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has issued design standards for transportation structures and bridges to adapt to climate change impacts. Without fanfare in February 2020, VDOT issued Chapter 33, “Considerations of Climate Change and Coastal Storms,” one of the few state transportation departments in the nation to take this step.
This document considers not just Sea Level Rise but also Temperature Change, Salinity, and Precipitation or Rainfall Intensity, a broad suite of impacts affecting transportation structures.
For Sea Level Rise, VDOT used the NOAA Intermediate-High projections.
Temperature impacts were drawn from down scaled data from the Fourth National Climate Assessment.
Salinity impacts assume long-term predictions for salt water intrusion would shift the borderlines between fresh water and salt water in the rivers and streams that feed into the Chesapeake Bay from 8.5 miles to 11.2 miles farther inland by year 2100. These are derived from a study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council (VTRC), “Considerations for Integrating Climate Adaptation Measures into VDOT Structure Design Decisions, September 2018.”
Precipitation impacts assume a 20% increase in rainfall intensity and a 25% increase in discharge to be used in the design of bridges. These estimates are from the VTRC study, “Incorporating Potential Climate Change Impacts in Bridge and Culvert Design (2019)”
Kudos to the Virginia Department of Transportation for this work. We are getting closer to a unified, statewide approach to climate change adaptation.
Some press coverage HERE.