Sea Level Change Adaptation Policies and Implementation Framework for US Federal Projects

Recently enacted federal policies and their implementation framework in adopting sea level change (SLC) in the U.S. for federal projects are described in this paper. Several federal agencies in the U.S. maintain trends in historical SLC and predict future global, regional, and local SLCs for different climate change scenarios. While U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was the earliest to require incorporating physical effects of projected future SLC across the project life cycle for USACE projects, a consistent national strategy is emerging only recently. USACE also maintains the well-known "Sea Level Change Calculator" that now include several models of future SLC predictions in addition to the initial model based on U.S. National Research Council. The National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs) in recent years required that a project-specific flood mitigation plan be adopted for all U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) projects located within or partially within the 100-year floodplain, and that considerations for the anticipated changing environmental conditions be included in facility designs. The federal interagency program on global change research (U.S. Global Change Research Program, USGCRP), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and recently National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) while periodically provide future SLC projections to advance climate change science, they do not necessarily mandate these projections to be implemented in project planning. Some state and local agencies require specific measures to address future SLC for projects in their jurisdictions where the requirements are primarily guided by community exposure to flooding hazards. This paper presents a summary of the recent policy developments addressing SLC and alignment with existing industry codes and practices.