Final report on project feasibility : to Jacksonville Transportation Authority, November, 1979

This report was prepared for the purpose of determining the feasibility of the DPM for the Jacksonville CBD. The gathering of data, the preparation of information, the research, the citizens\u27 participation, the alternatives analysis, and the detailed planning were all done for the purpose of answering one basic question: Is a downtown people mover feasible for Jacksonville

Transportation Engineering Approaches to Climate Resilience: Assessment of Key Gaps in the Integration of Climate Change Considerations into Transportation Engineering: Task 2.3

In many areas of the United States, climate change is bringing an increase in frequency of extreme heat and precipitation, as well as an increase in sea level rise and associated storm surge, and a host of secondary impacts. These climate stressors are taxing an already aging transportation system, and the continuation or acceleration of these trends are often not accounted for in new construction. Recent research has provided insights into how scientists believe the climate may change, and recent pilot studies have revealed anticipated vulnerabilities of transportation agencies. However, research on how transportation practitioners should use and react to this information is still limited. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is seeking to provide answers through the development of case studies and methodologies in the Transportation Engineering Approaches to Climate Resiliency Project. A first step to addressing these shortcomings is the identification of exactly what type of assistance practitioners need. This report: Reviews gaps in information and practice related to integrating climate change into transportation engineering (Section 2) and recommends a select set of gaps for further investigation in the remainder of the project (Section 3)

MnDOT Flash Flood Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment Pilot Project

MnDOT planners and engineers have long considered minimizing the risk of flash flooding in the siting and design of the state\u2019s roadway network. However, as has been the standard practice worldwide, they have traditionally assumed that future climate conditions will be similar to those recorded in the past. Climate change challenges this assumption and calls for new approaches to understanding vulnerabilities across the highway system and at specific transportation facilities so that appropriate actions, adaptations, can be taken to minimize expanding risks. This project, one of 19 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) climate vulnerability pilot studies nationwide looking at the effects of climate hazards on the transportation system, represents a starting point for developing these new approaches. The focus of this pilot study is on flash flooding risks to the highway system. While flooding is not the only threat to the state\u2019s highway system posed by climate change, it is likely to be one of the most significant and has already caused extensive disruptions to the transportation system in many areas

South Florida Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Pilot Project

In 2013, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sponsored climate resilience pilot studies in selected states and metropolitan areas in the U.S. The intent of these pilot studies was to examine approaches to \u201cconduct climate change and extreme weather vulnerability assessments of transportation infrastructure and to analyze options for adapting and improving resiliency.\u201d The Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), as lead agency on behalf of the region\u2019s three MPOs, and in partnership with other agencies, received one of the pilot projects. The project studied the southeast Florida four-county region. This report presents the results of this study. Five study objectives were adopted to guide the analysis: 1) provide adaptation analysis capability, 2) identify adaptation projects and strategies, 3) apply a vulnerability framework and provide feedback to the planning process, 4) enhance decision support and 5) strengthen institutional capacity. The study examined three climate change-related stresses: sea level rise inundation, storm surge flooding, and heavy precipitation induced flooding. Only roadway and passenger rail facilities on the designated regional transportation network were considered as part of this analysis. The overall approach to the vulnerability assessment was based on the FHWA\u2019s Climate Change and Extreme Weather Vulnerability Assessment Framework. A scoring system was used to rate each road and rail link in the region with respect to their vulnerability to permanent sea level rise inundation and periodic inundation from storm surge and heavy rainfall

Quantifying the increasing sensitivity of power systems to climate variability

Large quantities of weather-dependent renewable energy generation are expected in power systems under climate change mitigation policies, yet little attention has been given to the impact of long term climate variability. By combining state-ofthe-art multi-decadal meteorological records with a parsimonious representation of a power system, this study characterises the impact of year-to-year climate variability on multiple aspects of the power system of Great Britain (including coal, gas and nuclear generation), demonstrating why multi-decadal approaches are necessary. All aspects of the example system are impacted by inter-annual climate variability, with the impacts being most pronounced for baseload generation. The impacts of inter-annual climate variability increase in a 2025 wind-power scenario, with a 4-fold increase in the inter-annual range of operating hours for baseload such as nuclear. The impacts on peak load and peaking-plant are comparably small. Less than 10 years of power supply and demand data are shown to be insuffcient for providing robust power system planning guidance. This suggests renewable integration studies - widely used in policy, investment and system design - should adopt a more robust approach to climate characterisation

Alaska Climate Trend Vulnerability Study

This report presents the findings of a study that examined three transportation projects in Alaska for potential vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather events. The study was initiated jointly by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (AKDOT&PF) and the United States Federal Land Management Agencies (FLMAs) through a grant provided by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The focus of the study was to better understand changing climate conditions in Alaska and how this understanding could potentially lead to more informed decisions on transportation asset investments, both capital investment and operation/maintenance decisions. The three case studies included an examination of roadway exposure to permafrost thaw, airport runway exposure to sea level rise and changing wind and sea ice patterns, and slope instability related to permafrost thaw and more intense precipitation. An eleven-step process developed by FHWA for engineering vulnerability assessment was used to develop the findings for each case study. The study found that future efforts to incorporate changing climate conditions into engineering decision-making will require a coordinated effort among federal agencies, state agencies, and academic or research institutions that focus on climate forecasts. The data produced by these agencies is often not specific to a project site and thus some effort is needed to translate the more aggregate forecasts to site-specific data. In particular, defining longer term climate change exposure in Alaska would benefit from more data on transportation assets including information on surrounding environmental conditions (e.g. permafrost measurement), site conditions (e.g. elevations), construction assumptions/methods, and any noted maintenance records that focus on environmentrelated problems. The application of the eleven-step process is outside of normal engineering practice and requires significant commitment and coordination for successful application as it is a new process requiring the development of information not currently prepared for other engineering projects. Shifting to a more risk-based decision-making framework will help facilitate this process moving forward. The case studies also showed that relatively low cost options can be viable strategies for dealing with climate change-related vulnerabilities. Importantly, the process of developing input data requires significant coordination between climate scientists and engineers

Dragonfly: Investigating the Surface Composition of Titan

Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander mission, selected as a finalist in NASA's New Frontiers Program, that is designed to sample materials and determine the surface composition in different geologic settings on Titan. This revolutionary mission concept would explore diverse locations to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, to investigate how far prebiotic chemistry has progressed, and to search for chemical signatures that could be indicative of water-based and/or hydrocarbon-based life. Here we describe Dragonfly's capabilities to determine the composition of a variety of surface units on Titan, from elemental components to complex organic molecules. The compositional investigation ncludes characterization of local surface environments and finely sampled materials. The Dragonfly flexible sampling approach can robustly accommodate materials from Titan's most intriguing surface environments

Cost and performance of some carbon capture technology options for producing different quality CO₂ product streams

A techno-economic assessment of power plants with CO2 capture technologies with a focus on process scenarios that deliver different grades of CO2 product purity is presented. The three leading CO2 capture technologies are considered, namely; oxyfuel combustion, pre-combustion and post-combustion capture. The study uses a combination of process simulation of flue gas cleaning processes, modelling with a power plant cost and performance calculator and literature values of key performance criteria in order to evaluate the performance, cost and CO2 product purity of the considered CO2 capture options. For oxyfuel combustion capture plants, three raw CO2 flue gas processing strategies of compression and dehydration only, double flash system purification and distillation purification are considered. Analysis of pre-combustion capture options is based on integrated gasification combined cycle plants using physical solvent systems for capturing CO2 and sulfur species via three routes; co-capture of sulfur impurities with the CO2 stream using Selexol™ solvent, separate capture of CO2 and sulfur impurities using Selexol™, and Rectisol® solvent systems for separate capture of sulfur impurities and CO2. Analysis of post-combustion capture plants was made with and without some conventional pollution control devices. The results highlight the wide variation in CO2 product purity for different oxyfuel combustion capture scenarios and the wide cost variation for the pre-combustion capture scenarios. The post-combustion capture plant with conventional pollution control devices offers high CO2 purity (99.99 mol%) for average cost of considered technologies. The calculations performed will be of use in further analyses of whole chain CCS for the safe and economic capture, transport and storage of CO2

Estimating External Travel Using Purchased Third-party Data

SJN 134877Archived travel data (ATD) derived from various private sources has attractive characteristics that suggest it can be a suitable replacement for traditional sample-based external travel studies or other similar origin-destination (OD) studies. The hope is that this new source of information will reduce or eliminate several negative characteristics of traditional methods. Before this hope can be realized, however, the new solution must be validated; this is the main intent of this research project