Climate Adaptation Planning

The geographically and climatologically diverse Sacramento region faces a range of climate-related threats. Increasing extreme heat poses maintenance and operational issues for roadways, bridges and railways, particularly in the lower lying portions of the region. Wildfires and landslides present risks to the transportation system in the higher elevation areas. Higher extreme and average precipitation levels and changing snowmelt patterns could increase flooding and erosion on roadways in both the more mountainous areas and in downstream drainage basins. Sea level rise and storm surge pose risks to the Delta communities and transportation system serving them.

The region’s communities vary in size, demographics, and capacity to address climate threats. Through climate adaptation planning work, SACOG aims to help its members navigate these risks and establish a more resilient transportation network.

Regional Climate Adaptation Data web apps

State, regional, and local governments are exploring how potential climate change impacts could affect their natural and man-made systems, and residents. In addition to the human experience of extreme weather events, they can also cause significant damage to transportation infrastructure, requiring expensive repairs or replacement of infrastructure.

Explore the Climate Adaptation Site

The SACOG climate adaptation site enables exploration of peer-reviewed data showing how climate change might affect the transportation networks and residents of the Sacramento region. The site is currently in draft form and will be updated with additional region-specific resources.

Take the virtual tour of how to use the Climate Adaptation Site

Project-Level Adaptation Strategies for Transportation

The Project-Level Climate Adaptation Strategies for Transportation in the SACOG Region (2020) provides guidance for transportation practitioners to address climate change risk at the project-level. It offers recommendations to SACOG for advancing the resilience of the region’s transportation system.

The study examines risks facing individual transportation assets in greater detail and evaluates potential adaptation strategies. The purpose is to provide a spectrum of tested methods and approaches that may be useful for projects in the region.

Each report section is described below.

Executive Summary

Federal and State Guidance – This section provides an outline of State and Federal policies and guidance that influence project-scale climate change adaptation strategies relevant to the Sacramento region, to better understand the requirements and recommendations that exist for integrating climate change risk into transportation project.

This section additionally summarizes the Federal Highway Administration’s Adaptation Decision-Making Assessment Process (or ADAP), a framework for assessing climate change related risks to a transportation facility, which was applied in the project-level assessments conducted for this project.

Representative Projects – This section explores the process for assessing the climate impacts and adaptation strategies for a selection of transportation projects representative of common project types in the region, including:

• Extreme Heat and Transit Stop
• Wildfire Risk and the US Highway 50 Corridor
• Delta Sea Level Rise and Bridge Equipment Protection
• Extreme Heat and Pavement
• Riverine Flooding and Bridge Retrofit/Replacement

Using FHWA’s Adaptation Decision-Making Assessment Process (ADAP) framework, these representative project examinations incorporate future climate scenarios, evaluation of different adaptation options, varying degrees of economic analysis, and a set of recommendations for each project. These representative projects provide examples for SACOG and its member agencies which can be used to guide similar assessments in the future.

In addition to the representative projects section, which summarizes key findings from each assessment, each of the representative projects has a full assessment report which walks through the evaluation process for each step of the ADAP process.

Economic Analysis for Project-Level Adaptation Planning – This section focuses on the cost-benefit analyses and other economic comparison tools to evaluate adaptation strategies, including a high-level methodology for lifecycle cost analysis catered to climate resiliency planning. These tools were applied in the Riverine Flooding and Bridge Retrofit/Replacement representative project assessment, which demonstrated cost-benefit analyses to determine which adaptation methods are most beneficial economically and fiscally and explored how existing designs and capital improvement projects can be altered to incorporate climate resiliency strategies.

Implementation – This section describes how future efforts can use this Project-Level Guidance to inform studies and projects like the representative projects analyzed. This section highlights the recommendations for ADAP implementation by common transportation asset type and climate stressor combinations that may pose a risk in the Sacramento region, providing guidance on how to walk through each type of assessment, the types of data/information that needs to be collected and considered, and any major considerations from an adaptation planning perspective for the asset/stressor combination.

Recommendations for Incorporating Guidance into Activities – This final section identifies a handful potential approaches for how SACOG could incorporate the adaptation strategies and resiliency guidance explored in this project into future program areas and activities.

Vulnerability and Criticality Assessment

The 2020 Vulnerability and Criticality Assessment establishes a better understanding of extreme weather and climate change threats to the region’s transportation system. Expected changes in wildfire, riverine flooding, Delta sea level and surge, extreme heat, and other hazards pose significant risks to many portions of the regional transportation system and require rethinking of how transportation infrastructure is planned, engineered, and managed.

Building on SACOG’s 2015 adaptation plan, this assessment includes a more detailed analysis of which assets are most critical to the function of the region’s transportation network and which are most vulnerable to these hazards. This report describes the methodology, data sources, replicability of the analysis, and results of the systemwide assessment.

Sac Region Transportation Climate Adaptation Plan

The 2015 Sacramento Region Transportation Climate Adaptation Plan examines climate stressors in the region, their impacts on transportation infrastructure, and policies and strategies to address these impacts.

Damage to transportation infrastructure from extreme weather events can be physically and fiscally difficult to repair. Identifying which infrastructure is most at risk and how managing agencies could prevent or reduce impacts can help the region better prepare its transportation assets to be adaptable to a changing environment, in alignment with federal and state guidance.

Authored in partnership with CivicSpark, this plan:

• Broadly outlines key strategies and actions that the region can take to ensure its transportation assets are resilient to extreme weather events;
• Identifies high-level risks to the Sacramento region (e.g., precipitation, flooding, wildfires, landslides, extreme heat);
• Provides a general assessment of how transportation assets in the region (e.g., roadways, active transportation, public transit, rail, bridges) may be vulnerable to these risks, and;
• Defines a variety of policy and planning actions to improve resiliency of transportation assets.

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