Impacts of climate change of seaports: A survey of knowledge, perceptions, and planning efforts among port administrators

Port authorities from around the world were surveyed to ascertain how administrators feel climate change might impact their operations, what level of change would be problematic, and how they plan to adapt to new conditions. The survey was distributed to 350 major ports through two leading international port organizations, the International Association of Ports and Harbors and the American Association of Port Authorities. (PDF contains 4 pages

Using Boundary Objects to Stimulate Transformational Thinking: Storm Resilience for the Port of Providence, Rhode Island (USA)

Like many coastal ports around the world, Rhode Island’s Port of Providence in USA is at risk for climate-related natural hazards, such as catastrophic storm surges and significant sea level rise (0.5–2.0 m), over the next century. To combat such events, communities may eventually adopt so-called “transformational adaptation” strategies, like the construction of major new infrastructure, the reorganization of vulnerable systems, or changes in their locations. Such strategies can take decades or more to plan, design, find consensus around, fund, and ultimately implement. Before any meaningful decisions can be made, however, a shared understanding of risks, consequences, and options must be generated and allowed to percolate through the decision-making systems. This paper presents results from a pre-planning exercise that utilized “boundary objects” to engage the Port of Providence\u27s stakeholders in an early dialogue about the transformational approaches to hazard–risk mitigation. The research team piloted the following three boundary objects as a means to initiate meaningful dialogue about long-term storm resilience challenges amongst key stakeholders of this exposed seaport system: (1) a storm scenario with local-scale visualizations, (2) three long-term transformational resilience concepts, and (3) a decision support tool called Wecision. The team tested these boundary objects in a workshop setting with 30 port business owners and policy makers, and found them to be an effective catalyst to generate a robust dialogue around a very challenging topic

Considering Future Sea Level Change in Maritime Infrastructure Design: A Survey of US Engineers

Seaports are particularly vulnerable to coastal hazards such as hurricanes and flooding due to their location. Sea level change (SLC) can magnify the impacts of these coastal hazards, threatening the resilience of ports. Engineers must design port infrastructure that is adequately prepared for the amount of SLC expected within the design life of the structure. However, the uncertainty of SLC projections coupled with the long service lives of port infrastructure presents unique challenges to do so. Through an online survey of 85 US port and maritime infrastructure engineers, this research reflects the US engineering community\u27s attitude and approach to planning for SLC for maritime infrastructure projects. Only 29% of respondents indicated that their organization had an internal SLC policy, design, or planning document. Furthermore, results show that the lack of regulatory design standards in this area leads to engineers and their clients disregarding SLC more frequently. There is a clear need for collaboration among stakeholders to develop practical design methods for designing resilient port infrastructure

Missing the tide? Workplace cultural differences as a barrier to seafarer mobility in the U.S. workboat and sail training sectors

While previous research details the psychological and social benefits of sail training programs for amateur “trainees,” much less is known about the value and transferability of sail training work experience in terms of professional development for seafaring careers. This article reviews the current state of scientific knowledge on sail training and presents the findings of a qualitative study of maritime recruiter perceptions at 10 United States flag workboat companies. Results suggest that the maritime industry may benefit from an improved understanding of the role that sail training programs and the sail training community can play in training and inspiring the next generation of motivated and professional seafarers. Workboat recruiters see positive and negative aspects of sail training experience and perceive cultural divides within the maritime industry that may affect a seafarers\u27 job mobility, whether or not such divides actually exist

Visualizations Out of Context: Addressing Pitfalls of Real-Time Realistic Hazard Visualizations

Realistic 3D hazard visualizations based on advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) may be directly driven by hydrodynamic and wind model outputs (e.g., ADCIRC, the ADvanced CIRCulation Model) and hazard impact modeling (e.g., predicting damage to structures and infrastructure). These methods create new possibilities for representing hazard impacts and support the development of near-real-time hazard forecasting and communication tools. This paper considers the wider implications of using these storm visualizations in light of current frameworks in the context of landscape and urban planning and cartography that have addressed the use of realistic 3D visualizations. Visualizations used outside of engagement processes organized by experts risk misleading the public and may have consequences in terms of feelings of individual self-efficacy or perception of scientists behind the visualizations. In addition to summarizing the implications of using these visualizations outside of recommended practices, a research agenda is proposed to guide the development of real-time realistic and semi-realistic visualizations for future use in hazard communication. Development of a clearer use-case for real-time visualization capabilities is an essential first step if such work is to continue

Institutional and Conceptual Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation for Coastal Cultural Heritage

Climate change is increasing the speed at which tangible coastal cultural heritage is changing in character or being lost through weathering, erosion, and inundation. Damages to coastal archeological sites, loss of access to historical sites, and the alteration of cultural landscapes will force changes in the way researchers can study sites, tourists can enjoy places, and descendant communities who have lived in particular areas for time immemorial, and local community members can utilize and relate to landscapes. In the USA, the National Park Service is a primary coastal cultural resource management organization. The National Park Service has been working on climate change adaptation for cultural resources for over a decade; however, there are few examples of parks in which long range climate change adaptation plans for cultural resources have been implemented. Building from 20 semi-structured interviews with cultural resource managers in three parks, we found that institutional structures within the National Park Service, as well as historical conceptual framings specific to the research, recreational, and interpretive values of cultural resources act as barriers to managers’ ability to design and implement climate change adaptation plans. Institutional barriers managers discussed include the dependence of climate change adaptation decisions partnership projects and the leveraging of budgetary and staff resources within NPS that may affect climate change adaptation capacity. We found that park managers often saw impacts in parks that may be associated with climate change, but found it difficult to separate normal maintenance from climate change affected deterioration, which may lead to status quo management actions rather than revised planning for a changing future regime. Conceptual barriers managers discussed revealed a conflict between preservation needs of research versus interpretive uses and while NPS guidance recommends prioritization of cultural resources for preservation at the park level, regional managers were more focused on this topic than park managers. As NPS moves forward with climate change adaptation planning, opportunities to develop and improve cultural resource preservation with new technologies, improved prioritization schemes, and include public input in resource preservation may help coastal managers overcome these barriers

The Leadership Void for Climate Adaptation Planning: Case Study of the Port of Providence (Rhode Island, United States)

Climate adaptation requires leadership from a diverse group of stakeholders to shift investment priorities and generate political will for long-term planning. This is especially true for seaport stakeholders. Ports serve as access points to goods and services from around the world, promoting a higher and more robust quality of life. However, with the increased likelihood of intense storms, rising sea levels, and resource scarcity facing coastal communities, stakeholders will need to adapt coastal infrastructure to ensure long-term viability. Solving such problems requires leadership and participation from government across jurisdictional boundaries and/or the private sector. Using the case of Port of Providence (Rhode Island, United States), this study finds stakeholder perceptions of leadership responsibility contribute to an institutional void, in which it is unclear who is responsible and who should pay for resilience investment

Applying MCDA to weight indicators of seaport vulnerability to climate and extreme weather impacts for U.S. North Atlantic ports

This paper describes a case study applying multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to weight indicators for assessing the exposure and sensitivity of seaports to climate and extreme weather impacts. Researchers employed the analytic hierarchy method (AHP) of MCDA to generate weights for a subset of expert-selected indicators of seaport exposure and sensitivity to climate and extreme weather. The indicators were selected from the results of a survey of port-experts who ranked candidate indicators by magnitude of perceived correlation with the three components of vulnerability; exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. As those port-expert respondents found significantly stronger correlation between candidate indicators and the exposure and sensitivity of a port than with a port’s adaptive capacity, this AHP exercise did not include indicators of adaptive capacity. The weighted indicators were aggregated to generate composite indices of seaport exposure and sensitivity to climate and extreme weather for 22 major ports in the North East United States. Rank order generated by AHP-weighted aggregation was compared to a subjective expert-ranking of ports by expert-perceived vulnerability to climate and extreme weather. For the sample of 22 ports, the AHP-generated ranking matched three of the top four most vulnerable ports as assessed subjectively by port-experts. These results suggest that a composite index based on open data weighted via MCDA may eventually prove useful as a data-driven tool for identifying outliers in terms of relative seaport vulnerabilities, however, improvements in the standardized reporting and sharing of port data will be required before such an indicator-based assessment method can prove decision-relevant

Stakeholder Perceptions of Seaport Resilience Strategies: A Case Study of Gulfport (Mississippi) and Providence (Rhode Island)

Climate change is having and will continue to have a range of negative impacts on socialenvironmental systems. Many ports, with their coastal locations and essential roles in regional and national economies, face particular exposure to storm impacts that may worsen with climate change. Currently in the U.S., port resilience planning falls primarily upon port operators. Engaging a wider range of stakeholders in long-term seaport functioning may reduce risks from disruptive and potentially irreversible impacts of climate change. This study uses empirical data gathered through two case studies of highly exposed U.S. ports, Gulfport (MS) and Providence (RI), to identify strategies that port planners and external stakeholders consider feasible for enhancing their port’s resilience. This paper categorizes these resilience strategies and suggests the potential role that different stakeholders could play in facilitation and implementation

Port stakeholder perceptions of Sandy impacts: a case study of Red Hook, New York

Understanding the impacts of coastal storm hazards on all maritime port system stakeholders (e.g. operators, tenants, clients, workers, communities, governments) is essential to comprehensive climate change resilience planning. While direct damages and indirect impacts are quantifiable through economic data and modeling, qualitative data on the intangible consequences of storms are necessary to explicate interdependencies between stakeholders as well as conditions that substantially affect response and recovery capacities. This case study explores Hurricane Sandy storm impacts using evidence solicited from stakeholder representatives and extracted from contemporaneous and technical accounts of storm impacts on the port system at Red Hook Container Terminal, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Results highlight the wide range of direct damages, indirect costs, and intangible consequences impacting stakeholders across institutional boundaries and requiring coordination for recovery, providing insight into stakeholder relationships and dependencies in the post-disaster response and recovery process that are often not fully accounted for in current vulnerability assessment and response planning methodologies