ResilientMass Action Team’s (RMAT) Climate Resilience Design Standards Tool

Indrani Ghosh, PhD, Senior Technical Leader, Climate Resilience Practice, Weston & Sampson and Mia Mansfield, Assistant Secretary for Resilience, Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs

The Climate Resilience Design Standards Tool (the Tool), championed by the ResilientMass Action Team (RMAT) through the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and their technical consultants Weston & Sampson and Geonetics, Inc., supports efforts by Massachusetts agencies and municipalities to integrate climate change projections into planning, design, and evaluation of proposed projects. This project implemented urgent priorities identified in the FEMA-recognized 2018 MA Statewide Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan and its 5–year update, the 2023 ResilientMass Plan, with goals to: 

• Make preliminary climate resilience analysis more universally accessible.
• Inform climate resilient planning and design of infrastructure, buildings, and natural resource assets for capital planning and procurement. 
• Provide recommendations based on consistent use of the state’s climate and hazards data. 
• Provide a unified and automated tool that state agencies and municipalities can use for grant applications and evaluation of projects. 

This Tool is free to use and accessible online; anyone can create an account and enter unlimited projects. It takes approximately 15 to 30 minutes to enter information for a project depending on its complexity and the number of assets entered. Users can create unlimited projects and view and modify project information in the easy-to-use interactive viewer. The summarized inputs and outputs are also available for download in standardized report format. Use of the Tool has already been integrated into the Commonwealth’s capital planning process, as well as several state major grant program applications, and the Massachusetts Environmental Planning Agency (MEPA) review process. 

In addition to these uses by the Commonwealth, the Tool is recommended for use throughout a typical design process for a proposed project in Massachusetts. The information is intended for people with technical and non-technical expertise so that it can empower communities to be aware of their risk and provide a standardized, recommended basis-of-discussion to implement actionable climate resilience. 

Diagram showing where the Tool is recommended in typical design process

Positive Impacts and Long-Term Benefits 
The Tool bridges the gap between climate projections and using data for the design of physical assets by establishing criteria with projected values and guidance on how to incorporate them in planning, early design, and evaluation. As we experience more frequent and intense extreme storms, temperatures, and rising sea levels, we see an urgent need for this type of standardized framework.

Climate Resilience Design Standards and Guidelines Project Goals

Projects throughout the Commonwealth were considering climate change prior to the development of the Tool, but there was inconsistency in the use of available climate data. Data were presented as a range of projections that change over time and are typically presented as trends, rather than return periods or design storms (for example, increase in days with rainfall over 2 inches versus 25-year, 24-hour storm). How this information supported decision-making and design of assets was based on individual climate initiatives that varied across state agencies and municipalities as well as by the consultant they hired. This resulted in inconsistent design approaches for assets and no way to compare climate resilience across the board. This project developed a uniform statewide methodology for the consistent use of climate projections so results are replicable and can be integrated into planning and design processes. 

One of the key innovative features of the risk-based standards is that they are dynamic to the proposed asset; assets of the same type may have a variable useful life (for example: is the asset undergoing rehabilitation or new construction?) or function-based criticality (for example: does loss or inoperability of the asset result in cascading impacts to infrastructure?). These complex relationships are built into the Tool framework so users can easily access the recommendations without needing climate projection or design expertise; the information presented to the public is clear, simplified, and actionable. Climate resilient design standards are available for sea level rise/storm surge, extreme precipitation, and extreme heat and include recommended: 

• Planning horizon (intermediate and/or target) 
• Return period (sea level rise/storm surge and precipitation) or percentile (heat) 
• Applicable design criteria likely to be affected by climate change (projected tidal datums, water surface elevation, rainfall depths, cooling degree days, etc.) 
• Climate projection source and recommended method to estimate design criteria if projections are not available

The latest update to the Tool (Version 1.2, July 2022) incorporates interactive coastal flood risk maps that illustrate projected water surface elevations over time from the Massachusetts Coast Flood Risk Model (MC-FRM) outputs and are dynamic to the project location and asset(s). 

Example Interactive Projected Water Surface Elevation Maps
Maps specific to the project location and assets entered are generated where data are available.

The Climate Resilience Design Standards and Guidance project serves as a roadmap for other entities to adopt these resources and lowers the level of effort for similar future efforts. The Tool is currently limited to projects within Massachusetts, but the resources provided within still have implications for integrating climate resilience into the built environment outside of the Commonwealth. The Tool is not a black box and the underlying framework is transparent, thoroughly documented, and published on the hosting website for anyone to access. The methodologies to consistently estimate projected design criteria values can be applied wherever there are climate projections available. 

While the Tool is not a guarantee of risk or resilience, it provides a basis-of-discussion and a reference point for planning, early design, and project evaluation across assets for owners, consultants, regulators, and the greater public.

The Tool integrates climate resilience into the planning and design of projects with physical assets across Massachusetts, but also factors in social and environmental implications: 

• Provides a preliminary indication of how the project may contribute to ecosystem service benefits and impact climate-vulnerable populations and environmental justice neighborhoods. 
• Increases equitable access and transparency of climate information to the public so anyone with access to a computer with internet and an email address can use the Tool. Since anyone can access the Tool and create a project, clients and stakeholders may start asking for this information on all projects, which could have significant positive impacts on sustainable development in communities throughout the Commonwealth.
• Guidance supports technical and non-technical professionals alike and lowers the knowledge barrier to accessing this information for the public. 
• Includes best practices that “prioritize services and assets that serve populations in Environmental Justice neighborhoods and climate-vulnerable populations.” These supporting guidance considerations are integral to the success and longevity of a project within its community, in addition to the recommended design standards. 

Example Tool Outputs for the Overall Projects Scores with expanded rationale

Complexities and Overcoming Challenges 
As this Tool is truly a first-in-the-nation effort, there were significant challenges in creating this Tool, including inconsistency across climate change data, design practices, and project evaluation processes. The Weston & Sampson consultant team and project partners were provided with the climate projections available, government leadership and collaboration, and action items articulated in the State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan (SHMCAP) at the onset of this project in 2019.

The complex relationships behind the recommendations in the Tool are based on industry standards and professional judgment. To establish recommended return periods and planning horizons, Weston & Sampson considered the asset type, criticality, and useful life and considered the asset’s cumulative probability of being exposed to a climate event within its useful life. We often use the cumulative probability example of the 100-year flood event and 30-year mortgage to explain a roughly 26% likelihood of that event over that time. However, annual likelihood is variable and increasing due to climate change. Weston & Sampson, with support from academic and industry stakeholders, evaluated case studies to identify the future return periods that had similar cumulative probabilities over similar periods of time without climate change. This is detailed in the supporting background methodology documents available through the Tool, along with information on how climate projections were compared and considered for uniform integration in the Tool. 

The development of the Tool included active engagement from representatives of the RMAT and many subject matter experts. The complex, risk-based relationships that underlie the Tool were guided and vetted by representatives from more than 40 stakeholder groups, including state, federal, and subject matter experts, through more than 13 focus/working groups over 2.5 years. 

Five internal working groups were established for the following subtopics: Scientific, Building Assets, Infrastructure Assets, Natural Resource Assets, and Capital Planning. A Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of consultants, academics, municipalities, regional planning organizations, non-profit agencies, and federal agencies was established and used as a basis for Focus Groups. Feedback was incorporated into the development of draft materials during weekly interagency meetings, 10 working group sessions, a technical advisory group workshop, beta-version pilot testing, public surveys, and over 20 focus groups with more than 256 responses.

This iterative feedback contributed to three version updates to the Tool, with the most recent version 1.2 released in July 2022. The Tool framework is intentionally adaptable so that it may continue to be updated as new climate projections become available.

Stakeholder engagement with state agency representatives

The Tool is custom software, built on open-source technologies that integrate existing geospatial climate projections through a unique GIS resiliency scoring server. It fully automates outputs based on user-drawn polygons. The information is provided through the selection of close-ended fields and numbers entered in open-ended fields. The high-performance multi-user software architecture supports many users and projects analyzed with large raster datasets; more than 1,000 projects have been started, with more than 400 projects submitted through the Tool as of August 2022. The custom, integrated map server supports cartographic map reports without commercial, fee-based software, which automatically updates based on the asset entered in the Tool.

Geonetics, Inc., was tasked with building the Tool to the specifications in the supporting documents and business requirements. Weston & Sampson was tasked with testing the full extent of the Tool functionality and compliance with the business requirements. An extensive and rigorous testing process was completed at each phase of development. This included developing internal reproducible prototypes in Excel and ArcGIS to verify project and asset-level input-output relationships and test sensitivity. Testing was performed in four different web environments and tracked as iterative versions of the Tool were updated.

Testing was particularly complex because some of the intermediary scoring methods that inform relationships aren’t provided as project outputs, but also had to be tested. For example, the Tool does not provide a criticality score for an asset, but criticality informs the risk rating, return period, and methodology recommendations. Criticality is assessed through responses to a series of fixed-answer questions, and an internal prototype was developed to support back-calculation and testing. Another example is exposure service life, which guides return period recommendations for sea level rise and storm surge but is not an output. Exposure service life is calculated from the end of the asset's useful life (user input based) to the planning horizon in which the project was first exposed (GIS-based). Testing of these intermediary relationships and calculations was challenging but critical to the success and ease of use of the Tool for the public.

In Summary

Why Was it Developed?
RMAT’s Tool advances prioritized actions from the 2018 SHMCAP and its 5-year update, the 2023 ResilientMass Plan, and was developed to support efforts by Massachusetts agencies and municipalities to integrate best available statewide climate change projections into conceptual planning and design of projects with physical assets.

What Does it Do?
The Tool is intended to be used to inform climate resilient planning and design of infrastructure, buildings, and/or natural resource assets. This is achieved through two outputs as a result of user-provided information and project location: the Preliminary Climate Exposure and Risk Ratings and the Recommended Climate Resilience Design Standards and Guidance.

Who is the Target User?
Led by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, the ResilientMass Action Team (RMAT) is an inter-agency team comprised of climate change coordinators from each Secretariat. The Tool was developed with iterative feedback from extensive stakeholder engagement over 2.5 years and is free and available to the public. There are five expected types of users: Project Manager, Program Manager, Asset Owner, Technical Staff, and Project Evaluator.

When and Where Can it Be Used?
The Tool is intended to inform planning and design of projects with physical assets in Massachusetts. It can be used throughout the typical lifecycle of a design project, and use of the Tool is also referenced in several grant applications for state funding and in the MEPA process. This is not a regulatory tool but rather is intended to provide a basis-of-discussion for planning, early design, and evaluation that is standardized across the Commonwealth.