Assessing Risk to National Critical Functions as a Result of Climate Change

📖 The Scoop

The National Critical Functions (NCFs) are those functions vital to the United States' economic and national security, public health, and safety. Climate change effects have the potential to disrupt routine operations of these functions. Climate risk mitigation strategies are intended to reduce an NCF's vulnerability to, or the consequences from, direct and indirect effects of climate change. This report is intended to inform risk mitigation planning and decisionmaking by contextualizing climate risk mitigation through a review of mitigation strategies for four NCFs: Maintain Supply Chains, Provide Insurance Services, Prepare for and Manage Emergencies, and Provide Public Safety. These NCFs were chosen because they (1) rely on varying amounts of infrastructure and personnel to function and (2) have moderate or higher risk of disruption from climate change assessed at the national scale by 2100 using the current emissions scenario. To be at moderate risk of disruption at the national scale, an NCF would have to be expected to experience effects to routine operations over a large geographic area but remain operational in most of the country. Some of these NCFs also have high potential to cascade risk onto other NCFs. A high-level synthesis of risk mitigation for each NCF is provided, as is information on barriers, enablers, and illustrative examples. The current study builds on the team's previous work to examine climate risk and mitigation options for the NCFs.

Genre: Business & Economics / Infrastructure (fancy, right?)