The WICCI Infrastructure Working Group: Getting Climate Change Data into Engineering Design- It’s Complicated

Speaker: Rob Montgomery, PE, Chair of the Infrastructure Working Group

Discussion panelists: Daniel Wright, Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, UW-Madison, and Greg Fries, PE, Assistant City Engineer, City of Madison

The Infrastructure Working Group is part of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts. We have been communicating research results on climate data, construction materials and how to use new approaches to designers and policymakers who want to implement infrastructure projects that address climate change. The presentation will illustrate our work in communicating improved current and future rainfall statistics to stormwater infrastructure designers. Getting new data into design is not an automatic process: updating codes and standards is complex and time consuming, and perhaps even more importantly, designers need to be able to communicate climate change risk and response to elected officials and policymakers to make progress.