Recommendation: Plan for climate resilience

Utilizing planning and development processes is an effective way to implement measures that help protect against climate impacts. Through the Local Technical Assistance (LTA) program, CMAP is already working to integrate climate change information, such as vulnerability assessments, and recommendations into local planning processes. Other units of government in the region have created standalone plans related to climate change or incorporated these elements into other planning documents. Coordination across units of government responsible for different planning efforts is particularly important. For example, counties typically conduct land use, watershed, stormwater, and hazard mitigation planning, all of which affect climate resilience( The ability of our region and its communities to prepare for and recover from the acute shocks and …
Read more) at the municipal level. And because climate change can disproportionately affect residents within economically disconnected areas( Economically disconnected areas have a concentration of low income residents and either minority re…
Read more), as well as the elderly, people with chronic diseases, and those without health insurance, it is critical to meaningfully engage these populations in resilience planning.

Climate change has already affected the region’s infrastructure assets, causing road closures and damages to the transportation system, water and wastewater utility disruptions, and declines in ecosystem services due to habitat degradation.^{{{National Climate Assessment, “Transportation,” 2014, http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/sectors/transportation.}}} To continue providing essential services, the region’s gray and green infrastructure systems need to be transformed to anticipate further climate changes. Expanding the region’s green infrastructure network is an important element of this strategy. From the large-scale network of protected natural lands to site-scale interventions with a variety of co-benefits, these strategies can protect the region from the effects of climate change through natural functions such as stormwater management and the mitigation of emissions. Furthermore, biodiverse native ecosystems can also better withstand invasive species, disease, flooding, and drought expected of a changing climate.

New technology and gray infrastructure design and materials also have an important role in ensuring climate resilience. Modernization efforts should promote infrastructure that is based on revised design standards that anticipate future climate conditions and built or retrofitted at comfortable levels of risk tolerance. In addition, as road and transit systems modernize and become dependent on advanced technology, reliable electricity and communications infrastructure will become critical to the ability of the transportation system to function under extreme conditions.

Climate change is already causing more frequent road flooding, snowstorms, and heat- and cold-related pavement and communication failures. Inclement weather is currently estimated to cause 15 percent of congestion, increase the number of crashes and delays and reduce road capacity. Approximately half of the days in a typical year have weather conditions that affect driving.^{{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning ON TO 2050 strategy paper, “Highway Operations,” February 2017, http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/onto2050/strategy-papers/highway-operations.}}} Pedestrians and transit users are also affected by inclement weather, and pedestrian infrastructure is often overlooked in weather response activities.

Existing regional strategies to mitigate impacts include traveler information, alerts and advisories, vehicle restrictions such as banning trucks during high winds, road closures, snow and ice control, plowing, and pumping water from flooded locations. The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), the Tollway, and Lake County report real-time “road weather” (pavement) information to TravelMidwest, but other counties currently do not. Weather responsive traffic management is also not widely used today, except for closing roads to traffic under severe conditions. As road and transit systems modernize, the same technologies that can improve system safety and reliability can make the system more responsive to weather events. The expansion of intelligent transportation system (ITS) devices and traffic management capabilities will support a variety of weather responsive traffic management strategies, such as variable speed limits to reduce speeds, updating traffic signal timing and plans to support detours and slower speeds, and increasing coverage of emergency vehicle patrols to remove disabled vehicles more quickly. In addition, as the region’s maintenance fleets become equipped with fleet management technology, opportunities for better coordination of snow and ice removal between different jurisdictions will emerge. This will reduce costs and improve the efficiency of these activities.

It will be important to collect and analyze information about how facilities perform under various severe weather scenarios so agencies can develop planned responses and better serve all users of the transportation system. For example, focusing incident management resources on locations that are known to be affected by rain or snow can reduce congestion and secondary incidents. Pavement flooding information has not been collected on a regional basis, and there is no standard pavement flooding reporting system. The impact of flooding on our roadway operations as of today is not known. This strategy also appears in the Mobility chapter under the recommendation to Improve resilience of the transportation network to weather events and climate change.

Distributed energy resources (DERs) are electricity generation sources that are typically smaller than traditional power stations and positioned closer to where electricity is consumed, often on the same site (such as rooftop solar arrays). DERs help to increase the resilience of the energy grid to stresses such as high demand periods, and DERs featuring renewable energy sources have the potential to greatly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy consumption. Microgrids, which include DERs and can operate independently of the main grid, could also minimize energy service interruptions. They allow key infrastructure to be “islanded” from the larger distribution grid in the event of a broader system disruption, making them suitable for vulnerable facilities such as hospitals, data centers, and wastewater treatment plants. The ON TO 2050 Energy strategy paper provides more detail on energy strategies for CMAP and partners.^{{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, “Energy” 2017, http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/onto2050/strategy-papers/energy.}}}

Through its recommendation to “Promote Sustainable Local Food,” GO TO 2040 promoted strategies to facilitate local food production, increase access to healthy food, and raise understanding and awareness of nutrition and food policy. ON TO 2050 reinforces the importance of those strategies, and also recognizes that the region’s agricultural economy will experience disruptions due to climate change. Localized changes in temperature and precipitation will alter crop yields and economic returns.

The ability of farmers to adapt to climate change through planting decisions, diversification, resilient strains of crops, land management practices, and emerging technologies will be crucial to ensuring a sustainable agricultural sector in our region. In addition, as crop production patterns shift nationally in response to climate disruption, the role of the region’s agricultural processing sector and its transportation network will likely need to adapt to new products and routes.

Diversifying agricultural production and increasing the amount of food grown locally can help the region respond to climate and distribution changes in the future, particularly if other parts of the country suffer greater climate challenges to agricultural systems. For the agricultural economy to withstand these changes, CMAP and partners should support sustainable land management practices through local planning, fund critical supporting organizations from federal and state resources, and consider the relationship between a resilient agricultural system and infrastructure priorities.

Ultimately, an agricultural system that better mimics, enhances, and complements our natural systems and contributes to land and water health would be better for the region and our downstream neighbors.

Many resilience strategies require coordinated subarea, regional, or statewide action. A regional partnership may be an effective way to ensure coordination of resilience-building activities, policies, advocacy efforts, research needs, and best practices needed to achieve a climate resilient region. Regardless of its ultimate form, this platform can open channels for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and relationship building. Initial efforts to forge such a coalition included the Climate Resilience Resource Group, an ad hoc group that provided feedback to CMAP on development of the Climate Resilience strategy paper, and the Northeastern Illinois Resilience Partnership, which convened after the strategy paper was published to discuss implementation activities.

A sustained regional partnership can also play a role in helping to provide needed climate data and resources and to translate that information for other stakeholders. Regional leaders, from local elected officials to business owners, need up-to-date data on climate science as well as guidance on how to interpret and apply it in their unique contexts. The Illinois Climatologist Office, Illinois State Water Survey, Midwestern Regional Climate Center, and other entities provide high quality historical and projected climate data and climate monitoring. Many stakeholders, however, do not know about these resources or may not understand how data on precipitation or temperature changes can be applied to decision making. CMAP, in partnership with these and other institutions, can play a role in translating climate science to policy making and planning. The agency’s work on climate resilience and related impacts has resulted in new regional data about land surface temperature, social vulnerabilities to climate change, and areas susceptible to flooding, which can be shared and incorporated into planning processes.