Built to Last

The report argues that California's public infrastructure is deteriorating and based on outdated historical climate data, making it vulnerable to a 'new normal' of extreme heat, sea level rise, wildfires, and erratic precipitation. It proposes a 'climate-smart' framework based on rigorous science, equitable outcomes, financial transparency, and holistic planning. Key barriers identified include outdated design codes, a lack of actionable climate data for engineers, and systemic underinvestment in underserved communities. The author recommends updating state standards, establishing a centralized coordinating center for climate information, and adopting innovative financing mechanisms like resilience bonds to protect critical services and vulnerable populations.

• Traditional engineering practices in California rely on 'stationarity,' the assumption that historical weather trends are reliable predictors of the future, which is no longer valid due to climate change.
• California's critical infrastructure is aging and poorly graded; the American Society of Civil Engineers gave levee and flood control a 'D', urban storm water a 'D+', and transportation a 'C-'.
• Climate change creates specific physical vulnerabilities for various assets: paved roads face buckling from heat and erosion from flooding; transmission lines are threatened by wildfires; and coastal power plants risk inundation from sea level rise.
• Infrastructure failures often trigger cascading effects across interdependent sectors, such as power outages leading to hospital closures and sewage spills.
• Low-income communities, communities of color, and tribal communities suffer disproportionately from infrastructure failures due to historic disinvestment and structural racism, such as redlining.
• A 'climate-smart' approach to infrastructure is defined as being resilient to climate damage while reducing heat-trapping emissions to the maximum extent possible and addressing systemic inequities.
• A primary barrier to progress is that design standards and codes are rarely updated to reflect projected climate extremes, and engineers often lack actionable, downscaled data to integrate into their processes.
• Economic assessments for infrastructure projects often fail to quantify the costs of climate risks or the non-monetary benefits of resilience, leading to a potential underestimation of the business case for climate-smart projects.
• The report recommends the creation of a state-level coordinating center to provide standardized, actionable climate information and guidance to state agencies.
• Innovative financing and risk-transfer mechanisms, such as resilience bonds and green bonds, are suggested to bridge the funding gap for climate-smart projects.

APA

Gibson, J. R. (2017). Built to Last. Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/11/gw-whitepaper-smart-infrastructure.pdf

Chicago

Gibson, Jamesine Rogers. Built to Last. Union of Concerned Scientists, 2017. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/11/gw-whitepaper-smart-infrastructure.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Gibson |first1=Jamesine Rogers |title=Built to Last |publisher=Union of Concerned Scientists |date=November 2017 |url=https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/11/gw-whitepaper-smart-infrastructure.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{gibson2017built, author = {Gibson, Jamesine Rogers}, title = {{Built to Last}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2017}, month = nov, url = {https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/11/gw-whitepaper-smart-infrastructure.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }