Effect of climate change on life-cycle performance, safety, reliability, and risk of structures and infrastructures systems: A SEI/ASCE Project

Climate change due to global emissions of carbon dioxide will largely determine global warming trends over time impacting various aspects of our lives and civilization. There is strong evidence that climate change will have significant impact on temperature, precipitation and wind loads, which in turn will affect the safety, serviceability and long-term performance of structures and infrastructure facilities. However, traditional structural design codes and standards as well as recently-implemented risk-in-formed performance-based design methods are founded on the assumption that historical climatic haz-ard parameters are stationary and the effects of climate change are not currently considered. Recogniz-ing the importance of this issue, a group of researchers have recently volunteered to undertake a special project supported by the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE) to explore possible approaches that engineers can utilize to account for the impact of cli-mate change when designing new structures and assessing the safety of existing structures. This lecture describes the special project and its organization as well as related activities aimed at reviewing the current status and outlining research needs for considering the effects of climate change on the life-cycle performance, safety, reliability, and risk of structures and infrastructure systems.