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Developing coastal adaptation to climate change in the New York City infrastructure-shed: process, approach, tools, and strategies

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Abstract

While current rates of sea level rise and associated coastal flooding in the New York City region appear to be manageable by stakeholders responsible for communications, energy, transportation, and water infrastructure, projections for sea level rise and associated flooding in the future, especially those associated with rapid icemelt of the Greenland and West Antarctic Icesheets, may be outside the range of current capacity because extreme events might cause flooding beyond today’s planning and preparedness regimes. This paper describes the comprehensive process, approach, and tools for adaptation developed by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) in conjunction with the region’s stakeholders who manage its critical infrastructure, much of which lies near the coast. It presents the adaptation framework and the sea-level rise and storm projections related to coastal risks developed through the stakeholder process. Climate change adaptation planning in New York City is characterized by a multi-jurisdictional stakeholder–scientist process, state-of-the-art scientific projections and mapping, and development of adaptation strategies based on a risk-management approach.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, USA

    Cynthia Rosenzweig

  2. Hunter College of City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    William D. Solecki & Lesley Patrick

  3. City University of New York, New York City College of Technology, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Reginald Blake

  4. State University of New York, Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Malcolm Bowman

  5. Accenture, Washington, D.C., USA

    Craig Faris

  6. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Vivien Gornitz, Radley Horton, Klaus Jacob, David Major & Megan O’Grady

  7. Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Robin Leichenko

  8. Swiss Reinsurance America Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA

    Megan Linkin

  9. Sussman ADR, LLC, New York, NY, USA

    Edna Sussman

  10. Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA

    Gary Yohe

  11. New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Rae Zimmerman

Authors
  1. Cynthia Rosenzweig
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  2. William D. Solecki
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  3. Reginald Blake
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  4. Malcolm Bowman
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  5. Craig Faris
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  6. Vivien Gornitz
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  7. Radley Horton
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  8. Klaus Jacob
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  9. Alice LeBlanc
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  10. Robin Leichenko
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  11. Megan Linkin
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  12. David Major
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  13. Megan O’Grady
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  14. Lesley Patrick
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  15. Edna Sussman
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  16. Gary Yohe
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  17. Rae Zimmerman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cynthia Rosenzweig.

Additional information

Some material in this article has been previously published in Climate Change and A Global City (Rosenzweig and Solecki 2001), Climate Risk Information (Horton and Rosenzweig 2010), and Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk-Management Response (NPCC 2010). We acknowledge the contributions made by the Boston Consulting Group in the formulation of the adaptation process and tools described herein.

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Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W.D., Blake, R. et al. Developing coastal adaptation to climate change in the New York City infrastructure-shed: process, approach, tools, and strategies. Climatic Change 106, 93–127 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-0002-8

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