Summary of CRA’s Presentation at the 2024 CESA Conference
Posted: May 10, 2024 (Edited: May 12, 2024)
May 8, 2024, California Resiliency Alliance’s (CRA) Executive Director, Monika Stoeffl, presented at the 2024 California Emergency Services Association Conference.
Title: Looking Ahead at a Changing Climate’s Impacts on Future Supply Chains
Description: Supply chains as a system are global in nature and disruptions halfway around the world can have local consequences. They are also about more than simply the movement of goods. Thinking ahead and using plausible scenarios can set the stage for more meaningful adaptation planning today. Looking beyond the simple correlation of climate change = more extreme weather events, the presentation will explore often overlooked ways in which a changing climate may affect supply chains, both local and global, and potentially disrupt supply flows as we currently understand them, often in non-linear ways.
Below is a presentation summary. A copy of the slides can be viewed and downloaded via the link to the right. Additional Reading links are towards the bottom of the page and include the bonus content from the presentation’s open discussion.
Presentation Summary
How many of you have ever given serious thought to the supply chains involved in your morning cup of coffee? There is a whole world in that cup when you think about where the coffee beans come from, the water, the materials used in the machines for processing and brewing, …
If supplies for your community are disrupted on a good day it is a stressor event, perhaps even rising to the level of an emergency, such as with the infant formula shortage. These stressor events can erode resilience increasing future vulnerability. Disruptions during and after a disaster can amplify the impacts and extend the recovery time.
You can experience disruptions locally because of events elsewhere and disruptions locally can cause impacts elsewhere. For example, Hawaii has a dependency upon the Ports of LA/Long Beach and Oakland for its food supply.
Many people have thought about how climate change is affecting weather events such as more intense storms, wildfires, and drought or of how climate change is leading to sea level rise impacting coastal communities. This presentation touched some on the physical effects of the changing climate, but much of the presentation focused on the aspects of impact participants had likely spent less time thinking about, including non-linear impacts.
Since supply chains are still a topic many are trying to wrap their head around, this presentation started off with a supply chain fundamentals section.
Supply Chain Fundamentals
The fundamentals sections started by talking about how supply chains are complex, dynamic systems that can have fuzzy hidden connections. They are the web that spans across all of our sectors and industries linking them together. Additionally, while individual segments of supply chains may be local, they are all part of a global system. Even the local farm to table ones. The strengthening of more local systems has its benefits and can help build resilience to shocks occurring elsewhere, a sort of buffer, but they are not disconnected from the global system.
We are taught to think of supply chains as a linear flow models, like the one from FEMA Supply Chain Resilience Guide. Products and services flow one way, money the other way, and it is all surrounded by clouds of information.
That model is not directly wrong, but as emergency managers looking at the big picture, that model masks and obscures a lot of reality. In reality supply chains are intertwined systems that knit together all of our sectors.
After talking about supply chains as a system, the presentation looked at how not all inputs are necessarily interchangeable. Two examples were shared:
Not all crude oils are the same. Some are sweeter some more sour, some are heavy while others are light. How much of each type of fuel (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel) can be derived from a barrel of crude depends on the type. Each type also has somewhat different process requirements for refinement.
The ears of corn we buy in the grocery store are not the same type used for industrial uses such as ethanol production. They vary in their sugar and starch content.
The key point was that while adaptations can be made, things are not always directly interchangeable even if they look the same or are called the same thing.
The last piece of the supply chain fundamentals sections focused on the three areas where disruptions occur:
Supply Nodes – Entities that manufacture, process, store, and/or ship goods and services.
Demand Nodes – Entities that purchase and/or signal for goods and services from supply nodes.
Links – The physical and functional connections between nodes, such as communication, transport, or transaction connections. Links can also relate to service infrastructure, such as power.
After the touching on supply chain fundamentals, the presentation shifted to challenges in forecasting impacts. Since looking at future impacts, it is important to understand what might lead to errors in forecasting.
Challenges in Forecasting Impacts
This section started off with a quote from Richards J. Heuer, Jr., the author of author of Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. “More major intelligence failures have been caused by failures of analysis than by failures of intelligence collection.” A common call is for more data and information, but if our issues are in the analysis, more data likely won’t solve the foresight gaps.
The presentation also briefly touched on the challenge of addressing complex problems, like climate change, with a complicated problem solution mindset. A paraphrased excerpt from Theodore Kinni’s MIT Sloan Management Review article The Critical Difference Between Complex and Complicated was shared: Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes, like the algorithms…They also can be resolved with processes. The solutions to complicated problems don’t work as well with complex problems, however. Complex problems involve too many unknowns and too many interrelated factors to reduce to rules and processes.
From here, the presentation transitioned to a short discussion about models and highlighted two key factors: models are not reality and the importance of understanding a model’s assumptions.
After the discussion on models, a case study example was shared of how even a group of experts can have blindspots. After the oil crisis on the early 1970’s the President’s Science Advisory Council was convened to look at future scenarios so the US would not be caught unaware again. They explored various scenarios leading to higher social stressors and their impacts. Their conclusion was that the scenarios were impossible because “we” would never let that happen. Reality – all the scenarios did end up occurring.
For climate change impacts, there is a tendency to view the impacts primarily through the lens of how the physical effects of a changing climate (more extreme events) impacts society (in this case supply chains). Yet, more than just the physical will drive changes to future supply chains.
This section concluded by providing three high level (and very simplified) lenses/buckets through which to assess climate change impacts: physical, policy, and human behavior. A fourth dimension was then added – time. The physical, policy, and human behavior all interact and can play off each other. For the time perspective, it is important to keep in mind that today we are dealing with the ripples of decisions and actions taken weeks, months, years, and even decades ago. Those actions and the ones we take today will continue to ripple forward and influence the future.
Using that concept of looking though multiple lenses the presentation shifted to a new section – looking at the impacts of a catastrophic drought scenario.
The Climate – Scenario: Catastrophic Drought
Four physical impacts were highlighted and some supply chain implications of each were briefly discussed.
Water use and hauling restrictions. In a catastrophic drought scenario, there would likely be restrictions on how water can be used and by whom. There could even be restrictions on hauling water out of a jurisdiction, as has happened in Arizona. Some of the supply chain impacts shared in the presentation included: 1) reduction in and loss of agriculture crops and animals; 2) impacts to manufacturing since many manufacturing processes have a water dependency; 3) disruption of water contingency plans – water hauling restrictions can impact contingency plans that involve bringing in an outside water tanker in the event of a local loss of water; 4) infrastructure stress from usage spikes – the example provided was water use restrictions that don’t evenly distribute water usage, such as an entire community only being able water on one or two set days, which can stress old pipes as everyone tries to water at the same time; 4) the formation of black markets.
More dust and larger dust storms. Four impacts were shared here as well: 1) increased wear on engines – more dust means greater likelihood of dust/grit getting into engines and machinery, which increases the wear and tear meaning more maintenance and demand for new parts; 2) impacts to manufacturing – some manufacturing processes require clean facilities, increased dust drives up demand for filtration products; 3) reduced visibility for truck drivers – this can slow the flow of supplies; 4) depletion of top soil, something that is important for agriculture.
Land subsidence. Over pumping of the groundwater leads to land subsidence. Two impacts to supply chains were shared: 1) changing topography influencing flow of fluids – some pipelines and canals depend on gravity and as land subsides that may no longer be enough to keep the water/fuel flowing. This means more pumping is required increasing demand for those materials; 2) narrowing the margin of error – roads, rails, pipes, canals are built with certain margins of error or tolerances, but as the topography changes due to land subsidence it can impact those tolerances, bringing things closer to failure/risk points.
Navigable waterway restrictions. In a catastrophic drought scenario it is not unimaginable that the Sacramento River, which supports our inland ports, becomes unnavigable for marine freight traffic. That is a scenario that has already occurred elsewhere in the world including the Mississippi River here in the US and the Rhine River in Europe. The Panama Canal is another related example shared by a participant. In addition to an unnavigable river, a less extreme impact was also discussed – what an inch of water means in terms of moving freight. In 2017 NOAA released an assessment of the amount of extra cargo a ship could carry if there was an inch more water in a port.
Shifting away from the physical impacts, the presentation moved to looking at the supply chain impacts of climate adaptation & mitigation efforts.
Beyond the Weather: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Efforts
This section started with how our shift away from one type of non-renewable resources may be shifting us to have a greater dependency on other non-renewable resources. One of the big climate mitigation efforts is a shift away from fossil fuel dependency to zero-emissions/low-carbon infrastructure, including vehicles and electrical grid. One example shared as part of the presentation was the focus on advanced modular nuclear reactors as a possible zero-emissions energy source in the future. The catch is that several of the models rely on helium as a coolant, which itself is a non-renewable resource. One around which there are already concerns about future supply adequacy and one upon which the healthcare industry also has a large dependency for its machines.
Next the presentation highlighted how the drive to low carbon energy sources is also accelerating the demand for upstream minerals and bulk electric supply goods. This increased demand pull, together with geopolitical factors, is/will reshape parts of the supply chain. Even as manufacturing is on- or near-shored, the US still has a high dependency on other countries for raw minerals. Also, while pressures may drive increases in the recycling of minerals, there will likely always remain some applications for which raw unrecycled minerals are required.
After talking about demand shift and increases in demand, the presentation looked at a more human behavior driven element – the shaping force the stock market on future supply chains. Especially for publicly traded companies, the stock market will influence decisions around where to build facilities, what climate mitigation and adaptation actions to take and when, how much reserve slack to leave in or put back into the system, etc.
The final slide in this section focused on the fracturing of networks. Two different examples were shared. 1) How the transition to alternate fuels will make it more difficult to move fleets around. Today you can move a truck from one part of the US to another part or even across the boarder into Canada or Mexico and be able to refuel it. With regulatory requirements in California, and some other states, pushing for zero-emission vehicles it, it will become more challenging to shift vehicles around. 2) Patchwork of regulations and policies – as a relatable, though not climate change related, example the impacts of COVID-19 requirements on supply chain flow was used.
Here the presentation transitioned into an overview summary.
Summary
The summary started off with a reminder that supply chains are an intertwined system and spans across all sectors. Our actions as emergency managers can shift, stress, or even disrupt links and nodes of the supply chain impacting the resilience and recovery of out community and that of others.
The global nature of supply chains means that geopolitics matter. (This is a topic we delved into further during the open discussion.) We depend on inflows of supplies from around the world and others are dependent on supplies flowing out of and through our jurisdiction. During the discussion at the end of the presentation, a participant from one of the counties shared how COVID highlighted for them the impact their decisions had on California, the national, and even internationally in regards to food supplies.
The presentation wrapped up with three final points.
Our current supply chains and infrastructure are primarily designed for the conditions of the current and past supply flows. While they are adapting, they are not positioned for the transformative adaptations that may be needed.
While there have been periods in history when the rate of change was comparable or perhaps even greater than today, we have less slack in our systems today, which makes us more vulnerable.
“Complex systems don’t fail linearly, they fail exponentially.” The adaptive nature of complex systems means they can have a long tail to failure before they hit a tipping point after which failure accelerates exponentially, not linearly.
The final presentation slide presented four small activities individuals could take to increase their awareness of supply chains as a system: 1) What trailers and tractor (cabs) go together? When out an about on the road, observing whether branded trailers are hauled by tractors (cabs) of the same company or a third-party; 2) What is the landscape the road runs through? Again when driving being aware of landscape surrounding the road (e.g. where water might pool, wind gusts, dirt/dust that may obscure visibility, hight and weight restrictions); 3) Where did it come from? When shopping in a store look at where the product is from. While the label will only tell you where it was produced/manufacture/packed, not where all the subcomponents and materials came from, it still increases awareness of the global network of supply chains; 4) How is A connected to B? Play a game of finding connections and links between two random products/objects to get better at seeing linkages. The activities were purposefully kept small in scale.
After the presenter contact info slide, the presentation slides continued on with 15 reference slides of additional readings. The included additional readings can be found below and in the downloadable slide deck.
Additional Readings
Mental Models, Foresight, Intelligence Analysis
Horizon scanning — tips and tricks. A practical guide (European Environment Agency, 2023): Horizon scanning – a foresight method to systematically detect early signs of potentially important developments – can support policymakers and other decision-makers in anticipating future developments, managing risks and pursuing opportunities to help build resilience to future shocks and reduce uncertainty. This practical guide aims to foster a culture of anticipation and preparedness by inspiring and equipping practitioners across Europe to explore the future using horizon scanning.
Securing the Future: The Use of Strategic Foresight in the Security Sector (Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 2022): This Strategic Security Analysis begins by outlining the changing nature of security risks and the need for resilience-oriented security management. It then proposes strategic foresight as an approach that increases resilience by simultaneously “looking ahead” and “thinking beyond”. Next, the various purposes of strategic foresight approaches are outlined to improve decision-making in the prevention of, defence against, and mitigation of risks. Finally, it explains the success factors of strategic foresight in security organisations, followed by some general conclusions.
The Benefits of Hindsight: What we got wrong – and why (European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2019): Reviewing past statements on the future is more than just entertainment: it provides useful insights on how foresight can be improved as it helps us understand the mistakes we can make whenever we try to predict how the future will unfold.
Anticipation in Emergency Management: Shifting from Crisis Response to Shaping Future Resilience (OCAD University, Canada, 2020): There is a need for the field of emergency/disaster management to shift from managing disasters, to managing current and future risks and cultivation of resilience-building as core targets to be reached by 2030. This research project presents a paradigm analysis based on a survey completed by those in emergency management. This report identifies four archetypal patterns with systemic anomalies, explores postnormal potentiality and levels of uncertainty as a diagnostic to highlight emerging policy issues, and opportunities to evolve the system’s structure towards stability and building resilience.
The Art of The Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, by Peter Schwartz (book)
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (~100 Models Explained), Farnum Street
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, by Richards J. Heuer, Jr., CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence
Climate Change
The Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023) is the US Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It synthesizes scientific information and evaluate the state of the science on climate change to inform a broad audience of decision-makers across the country. Links to select chapters: Focus on Risks to Supply Chains Chapter; Transportation Chapter; Energy Supply, Delivery, and Demand Chapter; Water Chapter; Agriculture, Food Systems, and Rural Communities Chapter; Built Environment, Urban Systems, and Cities Chapter
The Indicators of Climate Change in California, Fourth Edition (2022), documents observed changes in the state’s climate and its impacts in the state. Indicators are scientific measurements that track trends and conditions relating to climate change. Collectively, the indicators portray a statewide picture of how climate change has been impacting the environment and people of California. Through these indicators, the report tells the state’s climate change story, starting with the human influences on climate, or “drivers,” followed by the changes in climate Californians have been experiencing, and then their consequences on the physical environment, on plant and animal species, and on human health. The report is available as a summary and full report format.
General Climate Change & Supply Chains
Bottlenecks and Backlogs: How Climate Change Threatens Supply Chains (US Senate Committee on Budget Hearing, 2023): This hearing examines a threat posed by climate change: disruption of global supply chains, causing economic disruptions, product shortages, and higher prices for businesses and consumers—climate inflation. The link provides access the video recording of the hearing and the downloadable testimonies.
Strengthening Post-Hurricane Supply Chain Resilience: Observations from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2020): In the third quarter of 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria revealed some significant vulnerabilities in the national and regional supply chains of Texas, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Drawing on lessons learned during the 2017 hurricanes, this report explores future strategies to improve supply chain management in disaster situations. This report makes recommendations to strengthen the roles of continuity planning, partnerships between civic leaders with small businesses, and infrastructure investment to ensure that essential supply chains will remain operational in the next major disaster.
Climate Change and Adaptation in Global Supply-Chain Networks (Federal Reserve Board, 2022): This paper examines how physical climate risks affect firms’ financial performance and operational risk management in global supply-chains. It documents that weather shocks at supplier locations reduce the operating performance of suppliers and their customers.
State of the Practice Scan: Freight Resilience Planning in the Face of Climate-Related Disruption (US Department of Transportation, 2022): The purpose of this research is to summarize the state of the practice for freight resiliency planning. Freight planning by public sector agencies is still a relatively new discipline. Given that climate change is causing more frequent and more severe extreme weather events and that these events are increasingly disrupting the movement of goods and services across the United States, this research provides a summary of current practices, methods, and gaps in freight resiliency planning to inform the development and improvement of freight resiliency planning to address climate change and extreme weather risks.
Climate-Resilient Supply Chains: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022): The characteristics of today’s supply chains – their dependence on shipping and air transport, specialized inputs sourced from specific locations spread worldwide, and reduced inventories tied to just-in-time production – make them especially vulnerable to disruption from climate risks. With the goal of protecting global trade worth almost $20 trillion annually against such disruptions, supply chain executives and researchers who study global supply chains are now starting to focus on ways of increasing supply chain resilience in a world buffeted by climate change. To explore ongoing efforts to create climate-resilient supply chains, the Science and Technology for Sustainability program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, held a two-day virtual workshop on September 27-28, 2021.
Aviation
Climate Change: Climate Risk Assessment, Adaptation and Resilience – Key Climate Change Vulnerabilities for Aviation Organisations (International Civil Aviation Organization, 2022): The tables provide an overview of potential effects by three organisation types (airports, air navigation service providers (ANSPs), aircraft operators) for each of the four climate impacts identified by respondents to the ICAO Climate Adaptation Synthesis stakeholder survey as of greatest concern.
Effects of Climate Change on Aviation Business and Economics (International Civil Aviation Organization, 2020): Effects of climate change on aviation business and economics include both physical risks such as flight delays or airport closures and related costs, and contractual, regulatory or legal compliance risks. There may also be risks due to the scarcity of critical resources.
Critical Minerals
USGS 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries: Each mineral commodity chapter includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity. For mineral commodities for which there is a Government stockpile, detailed information concerning the stockpile status is included.
US List of Critical Minerals (USGS, 2022)
Food
Addressing the Interplay of Climate Change, Food and National Security: Event Summary (Center for Climate and Security, 2023): This report presents the key takeaways of the first policy discussion, Feeding Resilience: Addressing the Interplay of Climate Change, Food and National Security, held in Washington, DC and virtually on 12 June, 2023, in a series of roundtables that CCS is organizing to engage with climate, security, development, humanitarian, and food security policymakers, practitioners, and academics. The purpose of the roundtables is to share experiences about the nexus of climate change, food insecurity, instability and national security in an effort to identify policy gaps and elicit recommendations and best practices that will serve as a foundation for the CCS’s Feeding Resilience project.
Adaptation Resources Workbook for California Special Crops: A Guide for Adaptation Planning (USDA California Climate Hub, 2023): This workbook provides resources and guidance for California’s agricultural producers and technical service providers to help them identify actions for increasing resilience to a changing climate. The workbook was developed with specialty crop production in mind, but it contains useful climate adaptation information for many agricultural production systems.
Climate Risks in the Agriculture Sector (United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, 2023)
This brief provides banks, investors, insurers, as well as their clients with a baseline understanding of the key physical and transition climate-related risks faced by the agriculture and aquaculture sectors. It aims at empowering professionals to integrate these risks into their institution’s strategy and operations through case studies and risk management recommendations for each risk identified. This resource is part of a series of briefing notes that cover major economic sectors and their associated climate risks.
Climate Change: Options to Enhance the Resilience of Agricultural Producers and Reduce Federal Fiscal Exposure (US Government Accountability Office, 2023): This report examines (1) USDA’s efforts in this area and (2) potential options to further enhance them. GAO reviewed laws and regulations related to USDA’s climate resilience efforts; analyzed literature; interviewed experts and agency officials; and used GAO’s 2019 Disaster Resilience Framework to evaluate federal climate resilience activities.
Climate Change Indicators for Agriculture (USDA, 2020): This report presents 20 indicators of climate change, carefully selected to provide useful and relevant information across a range of important agricultural production systems in the United States. Together, they represent an overall view of how climate change is influencing U.S. agriculture. Individually, they may provide useful information for supporting specific management decisions.
Electrical Grid
Clean Energy Critical Minerals Supply Chain Resilience (National Counterintelligence and Security Center, 2023): One pager that highlights critical minerals that are important for clean energy infrastructure and the top global suppliers for minerals used in different parts of the clean energy supply chain.
A Supply Chain Road Map for Offshore Wind Energy in the United States (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2023): In this report, the authors describe how a fully domestic offshore wind energy supply chain could develop. It summarizes the major barriers that could prevent or delay supply chain expansion and present potential solutions that could help overcome these challenges. It also presents a scenario for a domestic supply chain that estimates the number of required major component manufacturing facilities, ports, and vessels that would need to be developed by 2030 to support an annual deployment of 4–6 GW.
What Keeps Us Going? Understanding Vulnerabilities in the Energy Sector and Our Supply Chains, Webinar Recording (Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, 2022): Part one of the America in Transition series considers vulnerable aspects of our domestic supply chains and energy networks. This conversation examines single points-of-failure for U.S. commerce as well as security threats such U.S. reliance on foreign resources for batteries and technology manufacturing.
America’s Strategy to Secure the Supply Chain for a Robust Clean Energy Transition (US Department of Energy, 2022): This document lays out the challenges and opportunities faced by the United States in the energy supply cha in a s well a s the Federal Government plans to address these challenges and opportunities. The document is accompanied by several issue-specific deep dive assessments: Electric Grid Supply Chain Review: Large Power Transformers and High Voltage Direct Current Systems; Grid Energy Storage; Water Electrolyzers and Fuel Cells Supply Chain; Hydropower; Nuclear Energy; Solar Photovoltaics; Wind Energy
Electricity Grid Resilience: Climate Change Is Expected to Have Far-reaching Effects and DOE and FERC Should Take Actions (US Government Accountability Office, 2021): GAO was asked to examine U.S. energy infrastructure resilience. This report describes: (1) potential climate change effects on the electricity grid; and (2) actions DOE and FERC have taken since 2014 to enhance electricity grid resilience to climate change effects, and additional actions these agencies could take.
Extreme Weather and Climate Vulnerabilities of the Electric Grid: A Summary of Environmental Sensitivity Quantification Methods (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2019): This report highlight the analytical resources available for sensitivity assessment of electrical grid components under extreme weather and climate, and identify gaps in the literature on quantitative methods available for assessment of component vulnerability.
Oil & Gas Sector
Climate Risks in the Oil and Gas Sector (United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, 2023): Given the critical situation and its substantial contribution to global emissions, the oil and gas sector has to seriously consider what role, if any, fossil fuels can justifiably play in the decarbonization of the global economy. As the world moves towards the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, the sector faces significant transition risks ranging from increased policy and societal pressure to legal and market risks. Without major changes to their current business models, companies in the sector are expected to rapidly lose market value. This resource is part of a series of briefing notes that cover major economic sectors and their associated climate risks.
Multihazard Investigation of Climate Vulnerability of the Natural Gas Energy System (California Energy Commission, 2020): The goal of this report is to determine the changes and exposure of natural hazards (precipitation events, floods, sea level rise, and wildfires) on natural gas infrastructure due to a warming climate.
Transportation Infrastructure
Addressing Resilience to Climate Change & Extreme Weather in Transportation Asset Management (US Department of Transportation – Federal Highway Administration, 2023): This handbook is designed to help transportation practitioners incorporate natural hazard resilience into asset management. Upfront, it summarizes who to include in this planning process and how different groups (e.g., asset management, environment) can work together on this topic.
Physical Infrastructure: Preliminary Observations on Options for Improving Climate Resilience of Transportation Infrastructure (US Government Accountability Office, 2021): This testimony discusses (1) GAO’s framework for identifying opportunities to enhance the climate resilience of transportation infrastructure; and (2) preliminary observations on actions taken and options to further enhance the climate resilience of federally funded roads.
Climate Change Impacts Across California Transportation (California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2022): This report focuses on how a changing climate is affecting transportation infrastructure and key issues the Legislature faces in responding to those impacts. This is one of a series of reports summarizing how climate change will impact different sectors across California.
Caltrans Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Statewide Summary Report (Caltrans, 2021): This Caltrans Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Statewide Summary provides an overview and synthesis of the 12 district Summary Reports and highlights Caltrans’ planned next steps.
State Climate Resilience Improvement Plan for Transportation Draft (California State Transportation
Agency, 2023): This plan lays out the state’s recommendations for investing billions of discretionary transportation dollars annually to aggressively combat and adapt to climate change while supporting public health, safety, and equity. More specifically, the plan lays out ten guiding principles, eight strategies, and thirty-one actions for leveraging an annual combined $5 billion in transportation infrastructure programs to meet climate mitigation and adaptation goals.
Water Sector
Understanding Water Treatment Chemical Supply Chains and the Risk of Disruptions (EPA, 2022): This document is intended for use by the Water and Wastewater Systems Sector to better understand the risk of disruptions in the supply of water treatment chemicals. To better understand the supply challenges facing the Water and Wastewater Systems Sector (i.e., the water sector) and to identify which vulnerabilities may be prominent for a given chemical, supply chain profiles were developed for 46 chemicals used directly in water treatment or as precursors or raw materials used in the manufacture of those water treatment chemicals. This report presents a synthesized analysis of these 46 chemical supply chain profiles to support a greater understanding of water treatment chemical supply chain dynamics and the risk of supply disruptions. The report also has supplemental Water Treatment Chemical Supply Chain Profiles.
It’s Hot, and Getting Hotter: Implications of Extreme Heat on Water Utility Staff and Infrastructure, and Ideas for Adapting (Water Utility Climate Alliance and Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, 2020): The overall goal of the study was to understand the impacts of extreme heat on public water utilities located in diverse urban climates around the U.S., and then develop suitable adaptations to address those impacts. This report summarizes key findings but does not detail explicit cost savings at each case study.
Bonus Addition Based on Open Discussion from the Presentation
Global Risk Report 2023 (World Economic Forum, 2023): The Global Risks Report 2023 explores some of the most severe risks we may face over the next decade. The 2023 edition also includes a section on “Resource Rivalries” which explores four scenarios of how interrelated environmental, geopolitical and socioeconomic risks may affect the supply of and demand for natural resources. Links to the 2024 Global Risk Report as well as past ones can be accessed from the main 2023 Global Risks Report page.