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ASCE-NOAA Task Force on Climate Resilience in Engineering Practice

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office has forged a partnership with the University of Maryland (UMD) Center for Technology and Systems Management and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to accelerate the development of climate-smart engineering codes and standards.

The partnership between NOAA, the nation’s largest provider of climate information, ASCE, the world’s largest civil engineering professional society, and the UMD center with a focus on systems engineering is being established to help the nation account for climate change in future infrastructure design and construction. The vast majority of building codes in the United States and abroad rely on consensus guidance provided by ASCE, the nation’s oldest engineering society.

Scope and Mission

As the working body responsible for executing the actions identified in the cooperative agreement, the Task Force should serve as both an information exchange and as an organizing committee. The main functions of the task force include:

  • Promoting an understanding of the needs of the the civil engineering community, especially with regard to weather and climate information in support of the establishment and application of codes and standards
  • Providing clear identification and description of specific capabilities within NOAA or NIST that may be relevant to the establishment of ASCE codes and standards that take into account a changing climate
  • Promoting an unified approach by communicating these needs and capabilities across the broad landscape of NOAA and NIST programs
  • Promoting unified approaches across ASCE to understanding future changes in weather and climate extremes as appropriate
  • Identifying milestones for the project and communicating progress and accomplishments.

ASCE Standards 7 and 24

A focus of this partnership is on prioritizing and producing data. ASCE Standards go through the most thorough vetting process of any ASCE publications and we strive to make them as useful and long-lasting for civil engineers, and those in similar professions, as possible.

ASCE-NOAA 2022 Workshop Report

The ASCE-NOAA partnership released their first document that summarizes the discussions between civil engineers and climate scientists on how to best integrate nonstationarity with extreme temperature, intense rainfall, straight-line wind, and coastal hazards into civil engineering planning. This partnership plans to develop more documents based on the ongoing discussions between ASCE, NOAA, and as appropriate other agencies to meet the MOU commitments (see news release for more details).

Read report

Past Projects

  • Leveraging Earth System Science and Modeling to Inform Civil Engineering
  • Workshop I: Temperature and Rainfall, September 9 and 23, 2022. For more information on these, email [email protected] and you can have access to the Collaborate site where all the materials are housed.
  • Workshop II: Extreme Winds and Coastal Hazards, October 21 and 28, 2022.
  • ASCE-NOAA Leadership Summit on Climate-Ready Infrastructure, February 2, 2023
  • EWRI World Environmental & Water Resources Congress, May 2023.
  • Jainey Bavishi, Deputy NOAA Administrator, Building a Climate Ready Nation

Upcoming Activities

ASCE INSPIRE November 16-18, 2023

Task Force Members

  • Bilal M. Ayyub, University of Maryland
  • Ben DeAngelo, NOAA/OAR
  • Dan Walker, University of Maryland and EA

ASCE Members

  • Brian Parsons, ASCE/EWRI, ASCE Chief Sustainability Officer
  • Don Scott, President, ASCE SEI, Don Scott Consulting
  • Jennifer Goupil, ASCE/SEI Codes, Standards, and Technical Initiatives
  • John Dai, Chair, ASCE Committee on Climate Intelligence for Codes and Standards
  • Mari Tye, ASCE/CACC, NCAR
  • Michelle Barbato, ASCE/CACC/SEI, University of California - Davis
  • Norma Jean Mattei, ASCE/COPRI, University of New Orleans
  • Shirley Clark, ASCE/EWRI, Pennsylvania State University

NOAA Members

  • Debbie Lee, NOAA OAR/Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory
  • Dan Barrie, NOAA OAR/Climate Program Office
  • Joe Pica, NOAA/NESDIS
  • Joseph Barsugli, NOAA PSL and University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Mark Osler, NOAA National Ocean Service

Other Federal Partners

  • Terri McAllister, NIST Community Resilience Group Leader
  • John Ingargiola, FEMA National Initiative to Advance Building Codes

The Foundation of the ASCE NOAA Task Force

Find out more about the origins of the ASCE NOAA Task Force, what we hope to achieve, and thoughts for the future. Webinar Series: Leveraging Earth System Science and Modeling to Inform Civil Engineering Design (Part I): Extreme Temperature and Intense Rainfall (AWI031623) | Leveraging Earth System Science and Modeling to Inform Civil Engineering Design (Part 2): Coastal Flood Hazards and Straight-line Winds (AWI041223) | The Emerging Partnership between ASCE and NOAA and its Implications for Addressing Nonstationarity in Weather and Climate Extreme in Civil Engineering Practice (AWI051023)