01664001

Component

Sea level rise, as one of the most wide-spread and important climate change factors, has become a pressing threat to transportation infrastructure, especially in coastal region. Despite many studies conducted to evaluate the potential impacts of sea level rise or coastal flooding on transportation infrastructures, there are three limitations in existing literature related to transportation vulnerability to sea level rise. First, few studies investigate the spatial patterns of transportation vulnerability at the local level. Second, majority of the measures fail to capture the potential changes in trip origins and destinations due to the permanent inundation by sea level rise. Third, the influencing factors associated with such vulnerability have seldom been explored. To address the aforementioned three gaps, the purpose of this study is to investigate the spatial distribution of transportation vulnerability to sea level rise and explore the key factors associated with such vulnerability. Using Tampa Bay region as a case study, transportation vulnerability to sea level rise at the traffic analysis zone (TAZ) level are calculated and mapped using a proposed accessibility based indicator. Ordinary least square and geographically weighted regression models are applied and compared to identify the influential environmental factors associated with such vulnerability. The model results indicate that intense business development, high automobile dependency, and high level of exposure of transportation network in terms of capacity reduction are the causes for increased level of accessibility based vulnerability. TAZs near freeways and arterials with higher capacity would be more likely to experience increased level of congestions caused by network disruption. In addition, demographic characteristics such as working without children could influence the regional vulnerability through its impacts on trip generation patterns. Accordingly, future adaptation planning could focus on restricting intensive business development in potential inundation areas, reduce automobile dependency, and reduce the level of infrastructure exposure through hard structure protection.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee A0020T Special Task Force on Climate Change and Energy. Alternate title: Are Coastal Areas Equally Vulnerable to Sea-Level Rise? Exploring the Spatial Patterns of Transportation Vulnerability in Tampa Bay Region

18-06754

English

5p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

References

Arterial highways; Case studies; Climate change; Coasts; Factor analysis; Floods; Freeways; Least squares method; Origin and destination; Regression analysis; Risk assessment; Sea level; Spatial analysis; Traffic analysis zones

Tampa Bay Region

Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-06754

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 11:45AM