Impacts of Climate Change on Transportation & Infrastructure : A Gulf Coast Study

Climate affects the design, construction, safety, operations, and maintenance of transportation infrastructure and systems. The prospect of a changing climate raises critical questions regarding how alterations in temperature, precipitation, storm events, and other aspects of the climate could affect the nation''s roads, airports, rail, transit systems, pipelines, ports, and waterways. This book addresses these concerns for the region of the U.S. Central Gulf Coast between Galveston, Texas and Mobile, Alabama. This region contains multimodal transportation infrastructure that is critical to regional and national transportation services. Furthermore, this book reviews the climate changes that are anticipated during the next 50 to 100 years for the central Gulf Coast including warming temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and increased storm intensity. The authors hope that an increased awareness of these factors will lead to changes in today''s transportation decisions and planning processes, leading to a more robust, resilient, and cost-effective transportation network in the coming decades. This book consists of public domain documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.