Author: United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Year of publication: 2016
Available languages: English
Type of assessment: Climate change adaptation assessment
Format of assessment: Software
Details: Web-based application
Estimated costs for conducting: No information
Estimated duration of assessment: No information
To be carried out by whom: Private individuals and firms
Institutional scale of use: Multiple (see details)
Details: Depending on the utilities, scope could be water catchment area or rather local sewage systems/water supply systems
Assesment to be used by which target audience: Private sector representatives/SME owners
Details: Drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater utility owners and operators
Output: Report
Details: The final report generated by CREAT in the Risk Assessment module is the Plan Report, which includes the risk assessment results for a specific adaptation plan selected by the user. The Plan Report is a summary of the risk reduction possible that can be compared with the cost of implementing the adaptation plan. This report can be used as decision support to inform adaptation planning or to determine if there is a need for further assessment
Region of origin: North America
Developed by which sector: State-run
Applied in practice: No information
Geographic coverage in analysis: North America
Potential geographic coverage: USA
Sectors covered: Water sector
Method used: Mixed method approach
Description of methodology: Users define scenario and threats which constitute a combination of hazard and utilities exposure/vulnerability
Risk framework used: No explicit use of risk framework
Details: Model outputs based on RCP 8.5
Risk components incorporated: All
Hazards and impacts considered in the assessment: Change in temperature and precipitation patterns, Storm, Sea level rise
Source of required data: Secondary (available data is used)
Details: Information on utilities assets and population served, total flow and financial condition threshold values for threats that lead to utility's damage or failure
Temporal scale: All
Participatory elements: No
Details: User can go through web application by his own if he possess the necessary information on the utility
Consideration of interconnectedness and -dependencies of risks: No
Details: Users defines asset/threat pairs which can be analysed for different scenarios
Adressing uncertainty: No
Scope of assessment: Identification of risks, assessment of impacts, identification of adaptation options, priorization of adaptation options
Details: Costs are calculated in comparison with current situation with or without implementation of adaptation measures
Economic/Non-Economic losses incorporated: Economic
Applicability for entire risk spectrum (from extreme weather events to slow onset processes): Yes
Details: Covers EWE such as storms as well as SOE such as sea level rise
Recommendations for Adaptation measures included in Climate Risk Assessment: Yes
Details: Users begin their adaptation planning by identifying existing adaptive measures either from the CREAT Adaptation Library or by defining custom adaptive measures
Usefulness for political purposes: Shall help water utility owners to plan adaptation to climate change; no political purpose if utility owners are from private sector
Applied by whom: EPA
Open access: Yes