Transportation Engineering Approaches to Climate Resiliency – Coastal Engineering Assessments

South Coast Engineers developed recommended engineering practices for evaluating project-level vulnerabilities to future sea level rise and extreme weather events and designing solutions to adapt to those vulnerabilities.

SCE (teaming with ICF) was selected for this research and development project by the Federal Highway Administration to develop new, appropriate, engineering approaches to designing adaptations to make our built coastal infrastructure more resilient. This was part of the FHWA’s Transportation Engineering Approaches to Climate Resiliency (TEACR) project.

Best practices were identified, through engineering analyses of three diverse transportation assets, to improve the resiliency of:

• A coastal interstate bridge vulnerable to hurricane storm surge
• A major coastal highway vulnerable to barrier island overwash
• A local coastal road vulnerable to increased flooding and erosion due to relative sea level rise