Our team worked with Pinellas County and other stakeholders to develop a county-wide asset database, capturing the location and attribute information for critical potable water supply, wastewater management, stormwater management, transportation, natural gas and electrical infrastructure. Using the tidal flooding and storm surge inundation maps, we determined predicted flooding at these thousands of assets during any horizon-year/sea-level-rise scenario.
Our economist developed a series of mathematical functions relating flood depth to damage costs for each general asset class. The costs included damage repair to each type of facility and socioeconomic costs to the surrounding communities. These costs were used to score the vulnerability of the asset providing a risk-based system-wide vulnerability assessment so the county could identify where best to initiate their adaptation efforts.
After the completion of the vulnerability analysis, WSP used the Adaptation Decision-making Assessment Process (ADAP) to conduct facility-level adaptation assessments. ADAP, which WSP helped develop for the Federal Highway Administration, facilitates a scenarios-based approach to design and includes a detailed benefit-cost analysis of each alternative under each climate scenario. This allowed us to examine in detail the risk at each specific asset for each sea level rise scenario and develop preliminary recommendations for adaptation options.
WSP is currently supporting the county in the development of their implementation plan.
