Civil engineers have long argued that resilient infrastructure makes sense.
Now it’s time to convince people that it makes dollars and sense.
The third annual ASCE-NOAA Workshop focused on “Natural Hazard Risk Reduction: Building the Resiliency Business Case,” June 24-25 at ASCE headquarters in Reston, Virginia.
“I think we really drove home the importance of making the business case for resilience, but also how complicated that’s going to be, because there are so many different facets to it,” said Dan Walker, one of the workshop’s co-leads and a senior geologist with EA Engineering, Science, and Technology Inc. and the University of Maryland Center for Technology and Systems Management.
“And I hope that we can leverage the connections that we’ve made with these subject-matter experts to make that case in the future.”
The ASCE-NOAA Workshop is an outgrowth of the memorandum of understanding signed between the two organizations, along with the University of Maryland, in the spring of 2022 to work together to better incorporate weather and climate data into future building codes and infrastructure standards.
This led to the ASCE-NOAA Task Force on Climate Resilience in Engineering Practice, which has worked regularly for nearly four years to connect climate data and research to engineering practice.
The recent workshop around the business case for resiliency featured several sessions on financial risk, economic drivers, and infrastructure financing. That means these weren’t conversations in the usual resilience champions echo chamber. This was a diverse group from all corners of the infrastructure space.
“We had engineers, economists, finance specialists, as well as climate scientists,” said workshop co-lead Bilal M. Ayyub, Ph.D., P.E., Dist.M.ASCE, professor at the University of Maryland and director of its Center for Technology and Systems Management.
“The challenges we are facing with a changing climate and the increase in hazard frequency and intensity cannot be dealt with by engineering means only. For example, it requires estimating the future hazards, so we need climate scientists and the hazards specialists. We have a lot of talent and capabilities that could be coming from the federal domain, including NOAA. Other examples: we seek economic efficiency of engineered solutions and hence engaging economists such as from the Applied Economics Office of NIST, and we create means to finance these projects by engaging finance specialists in areas such as infrastructure bond rating.”
It’s the same “big tent” approach that can be seen running through much of ASCE’s ongoing work – from the efforts to expand the pipeline in the Society’s workforce development initiatives to the recent simplification of member grades to better embrace the entire infrastructure team; the wide range of professionals engaged at this spring’s ASCE Workshop on Reducing Claims Against Engineers on Alternative Delivery Projects and the 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure Solutions Summit; and cross-disciplinary collaboration is a critical part of the upcoming ASCE2027: The Infrastructure and Engineering Experience.
“The core takeaway for me from this workshop is reinforcing the different voices that need to be at the table,” said ASCE President-Elect Marsha Anderson Bomar, Ph.D., AICP, ENV SP, F.ITE, F.ASCE. “We must involve these other communities – the finance community, the insurance community, the bankers, the lawyers. We all have to sit down around the table and figure out what a different future looks like, because under the current model, there is not a great path forward to ever have enough money to do what we need to do with infrastructure.”
Focusing on the business case aligns with the current moment, too.
Changes in the federal government have led to restructuring at NOAA and a shift in priorities. The ASCE-NOAA Task Force will continue to collect and exchange data, as NOAA climate data informs the work being done now to develop the ASCE 7-28 standard. A report will be released later this summer, outlining the various recommendations developed at the workshop.
The ability to listen is more important than ever, Walker said.
“There are a lot of people who are going to play a role in the decision-making process,” he said. “Ultimately, whether it’s federal budget appropriations or adopting local building codes, there are a lot of people who have been external to this whole discussion of how the changing environment is driving up the costs of hazard-related natural disasters.
“You have to listen to them. You have to understand what their concerns are and then be prepared to address those concerns.
“When there is a lot of enthusiasm for addressing climate change, people can get comfortable talking to people who agree with them. And maybe we talked ourselves into some positions that turned out not to resonate with other external groups.
“And, you know, you don’t have to be wildly conservative or wildly liberal. It’s just about: how does a decision affect my business? How does it affect my family? Everybody’s situation is different, so you just can’t assume that everybody agrees on climate change or is going to agree on what the solution is. And so, I think we have to put ourselves in a position of anticipating disagreement, almost seeking out disagreement, so that we can better understand and shape our strategies.”
Learn more about the ASCE-NOAA Task Force and subscribe to its newsletter for regular updates and how you can get involved.
