The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office has forged a partnership with the University of Maryland (UMD) Center for Technology and Systems Management (CTSM) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to accelerate the development of climate-smart engineering codes and standards. The partnership between NOAA, the nation’s largest provider of climate information, ASCE, the world’s largest civil engineering professional society, and the UMD center with a focus on systems engineering is being established to help the nation account for climate change in future infrastructure design and construction. The vast majority of building codes in the United States and abroad rely on consensus guidance provided by ASCE, the nation’s oldest engineering society.
The ASCE-NOAA Task Force on Climate Resilience in Engineering Practice was established in 2021 for facilitate the climate adaptation of engineering practices and infrastructure.
The following products are disseminated and further information can be obtained from the Task Force or the CTSM with the first item is a redirect to the CTSM Youtube Channel on meeting presentations and other resources:
- ASCE-NOAA Task Force Videos of Meeting Presentations and Other Sources (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKTTDX0F3fMBBFr2hH42zuX7t_fPcsEiG)
- 2023 NOAA Technical Memorandum OAR CPO: 001, ASCE-NOAA Workshops on Leveraging Earth System Science and Modeling to Inform Civil Engineering Design. The ASCE-NOAA partnership released their first document that summarizes the discussions between civil engineers and climate scientists on how to best integrate nonstationarity with extreme temperature, intense rainfall, straight-line wind, and coastal hazards into civil engineering planning.
- Walker, D., and Ayyub, B.M., 2022, “Developing Climate-resilient Codes and Standards: The Path to Adaptive Infrastructure Planning and Design,” Featured Article in the ASCE GeoStrata of the Geo-Institute, June-July 2022, pages 29-33, https://www.geoinstitute.org/publications/geostrata
- Ayyub, B.M., Walker, D., 2022, “Developing Climate Resilience Technologies for Infrastructure: Perspectives On Some Strategic Needs in Mechanical Engineering,” Editorial, ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems Part B: Mechanical Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4054180.
- Ayyub, B.M., Walker, D., 2022, “Developing Climate Resilience Technologies for Infrastructure Perspectives on Some Strategic Needs in Civil Engineering,” Editorial, ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems Part A: Civil Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1061/AJRUA6.0001230
