A User-Defined Approach to Utilize Climate Change Information in Local Implementation of National Construction Standards

The project RECON is focused on establishing interactions in a triangle economists - consultancy - climatologists in the frameworks of the user-defined approach where the later give the leading role to the former. Climatologists bear the bulk workload of the project as providers of the quantitative data. Economists, consultancy and municipalities will define climate parameters critical to sector activity. Those parameters will be then formalized and translated into cost considerations. Climatologists will optimize their models, data, and methods aiming to minimize local climate projection uncertainties with respect to the cost function. The climate change information will be processed with statistical risk and damage assessment models and translated into return rates for extreme gradations and other utility parameters. Finally, the obtained utility information will be generalized to be reflected in national construction standards, policies and education programmes. Two aspects of the project must be outl ined. (1) We propose to investigate what kind of simulated climate change data, at what time scales and in what geographical areas, are the most required to obtain best possible projections for a limited set of requested utility parameters. In some sense it leads to an optimization problem which solution is the core of the NERSC expertise. (2) We propose a trial of this approach on two planned construction/transport projects, namely on bridges Sotrabrua and Hardangerbrua. By our view, the above two aspec ts justify the subsequent work on regional implementation of national standards and policies based on gained experience.