Climate & Resilience

We have developed specialized services to help our clients meet transportation-related greenhouse gas reduction goals, adapt transportation systems to a changing climate, and build resilience to disruptions that may affect the transportation system.

Climate & Resilience

We have developed specialized services to help our clients meet transportation-related greenhouse gas reduction goals, adapt transportation systems to a changing climate, and build resilience to disruptions that may affect the transportation system.

As the transportation industry, climate, and our world continually change and evolve, we must transform and adapt our methods, planning, strategy, and thinking to enable communities to proactively guide their transportation futures. Changes in climate, legislation, technology, community values, and travel demands are ongoing, and they all affect how communities manage and approach transportation. Finding answers to these new challenges in partnership with our clients and communities is our specialty.

Climate Mitigation

Balancing the need to travel with greenhouse (GHG) emissions and pollution reduction goals for communities

Climate Adaptation

Assisting clients in imagining future alternatives that respond to a changing climate and long-term, community-identified mobility needs

Resilience

Supporting clients in planning for and responding to transportation system disruptions caused by climate change and other natural disasters, to keep people connected to the places they need to go

We engage at the forefront of efforts to address the effects transportation and climate change have on one another.

We serve as a national leader in developing innovative transportation solutions that help communities, regions, and states achieve their sustainability and climate goals. Our climate experts help shape the leading edge of analysis methods, strategy development, and implementation approaches to support our clients. You will frequently see them working with diverse stakeholders to achieve desired outcomes, as well as sharing knowledge and best practices at conferences and events.

We examine and advise based on specific community needs.

Our approach to advising and planning is based on partnering with clients – listening and understanding first to see where the needs and concerns are in each individual community. We then identify transportation-related climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies that are customized to client needs and goals, whatever those may be: planning for and complying with new legislation to reduce GHGs or electrify bus fleets, minimizing vehicle travel and enhancing travel efficiency, improving access to sustainable transportation options, responding to locally-specific climate and disaster risks, or bridging the divide between sustainability efforts, transportation planning, and engineering.

We recognize and prioritize the big picture and the long view to assist our clients and communities.

We find many communities grappling with the environmental consequences of past choices and honor the need to understand each community’s history as we seek to repair broken systems and envision a future that includes a changing climate. Accordingly, we work to co-create community-driven solutions that respond to predicted climate impacts in diverse contexts and embed long-term strategies that build resilience into existing processes, such as asset management plans, state of good repair plans, evacuation plans, and hazard mitigation plans.

Evacuation Planning

We use our skills in transportation demand modeling, dynamic traffic assessment, and multimodal transportation analysis to help communities plan for safe evacuations, network resilience, and accessibility in response to climate change, natural disasters, and transportation system disruptions.

Evacuation Legislation

We are helping clients respond to legislation requiring analysis of evacuation scenarios and hazard areas, as well as a growing number of regulations related to resilience more broadly.

California
Assembly Bill 747 (AB 747 – 2019) – requires local governments, on or after January 1, 2022, to review and update their safety element to identify evacuation routes and their capacity, safety, and viability under a range of emergency scenarios.

Senate Bill 99 (SB 99 – 2019) – requires local governments to identify residential developments in hazard areas that do not have at least two emergency evacuation routes.

Assembly Bill 1409 (AB 1409 – 2021) – requires local governments to consider evacuation locations in addition to the capacity, safety, and viability of evacuation routes that serve a community (as described in AB 747)

Virginia
HB 1560 (2020) – requires the Virginia DOT to develop and maintain a map of evacuation routes, and to review the quality of transportation infrastructure along such routes every five years.

Florida
SB 1954 (2021) – provides funds for flood and sea level rise resilience planning

SB 1094 (2015) – requires consideration of future flood risk in local governments’ comprehensive plans

HB 7207 (2011) – allows local governments to identify communities as “Adaptation Action Areas” and prioritize funding for infrastructure and adaptation planning

Colorado
SB 260 (2021) – ties state transportation funding to greenhouse gas emissions reductions, requiring Colorado DOT and regional MPOs to act

Oregon
SB 762 (2021) – provides funds and legislative direction related to fire risk mapping and the wildland-urban interface

VMT Impacts

We help clients understand the shift from measuring congestion impacts on drivers to measuring the impact of driving, and plan for ways to minimize community and environmental harm while enabling freedom of movement.

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