THE ENGINEERING FOR CLIMATE EXTREMES PARTNERSHIP

Abstract:

Hurricane Sandy and the recent floods in Thailand have demonstrated not only how sensitive the urban environment is to the impact of severe weather, but also the associated global reach of the ramifications. These, together with other growing extreme weather impacts and the increasing interdependence of global commercial activities point towards a growing vulnerability to weather and climate extremes.

The Engineering for Climate Extremes Partnership brings academia, industry and government together with the goals encouraging joint activities aimed at developing new, robust, and well-communicated responses to this increasing vulnerability.

Integral to the approach is the concept of ‘graceful failure’ in which flexible designs are adopted that protect against failure by combining engineering or network strengths with a plan for efficient and rapid recovery if and when they fail. Such an approach enables optimal planning for both known future scenarios and their assessed uncertainty.