MAC URISA 2016

Superstorm Sandy has drawn greater attention to risks and vulnerabilities due to a changing climate in New Jersey. Much of this attention has focused on critical infrastructure (transportation, utilities), coastal communities, and natural resource impacts. Considerably less attention has been spent on impacts to industrial facilities that use and manufacture hazardous materials and the risks posed to these operations as a result of a changing climate as well as their proximity to populations that are especially vulnerable to climate change. In a project in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a team of researchers at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University sought to enhance and expand the current geospatial and mapping tools that are under development at Rutgers to include identifying industrial facilities that are in areas of high vulnerability to climate change impacts (storm surge, current and projected sea level rise, flooding, etc.) as well as to overlay the locations of industrial facilities in proximity to socially vulnerable populations. The project incorporated data from federal and state databases to create a dynamic database that can be used by planning and emergency management professionals to examine questions such as 1) What is exposed? (based on a series of flood hazard layers) as well as 2) What is vulnerable? (based on industries, chemical types, and chemical concentrations stored onsite)