Characterizing National Exposures to Infrastructure from Natural Disasters: Data and Methods Documentation

Abstract

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Current and Future Exposure of Infrastructure in the United States to Natural Hazards

“…The data sets and analysis methods applied are summarized in the next section. In addition, the data sets and technical aspects of the analysis are fully documented in a separate technical report and available to federal, state, and local governments and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) infrastructure partners through the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection (Narayanan et al, 2016).…”

“…As a result, this analysis does not address risk and is instead limited to exposure to natural hazards. The data and methods we used in this analysis are fully documented by Narayanan et al (2016) and summarized in this chapter.…”

“…Based on their models, the research identified mechanisms that could change exposure across the United States to natural hazards. As detailed in Narayanan et al (2016), the analysis only considers effects of climate change on natural hazards when the required data and scientific basis to do so exist; in the absence of such data and methods, hazards are treated as unchanging with climate change. The principal mechanisms for change, which are documented by Narayanan et al (2016), are the effects of:…”

“…Unlike many prior assessments that focused on individual infrastructure sectors or individual hazards, 1 the analysis in this report and the accompanying documentation on underlying data and methods (Narayanan et al, 2016) provide an integrated view of infrastructure exposure to a range of potentially high-intensity natural hazards. The analysis in this report describes exposures across multiple infrastructure sectors and multiple hazards and incorporates both current infrastructure exposure to natural hazards and uncertainty about the extent and intensity of natural hazards in the future in the context of projected changes to climate patterns.…”

“…Additional details about how these assessments were made are provided in the technical documentation supporting the natural hazard and infrastructure data sets (Narayanan et al, 2016). NOTE: A cell denoting "1" indicates that the infrastructure is affected by the specified hazard.…”