Authority_October_2020

26 October 2020 - The Authority Climate Resilience Evaluation & Awareness Tool Web-based tool for owners and operators of drinking water and wastewater utilities The Climate Resilience Evaluation & Awareness Tool (CREAT) provides registered users with access to the most recent national assessment of climate change impacts and helps utility operators consider how events such as sea level rise, shifting precip- itation patterns, temperature changes, and extreme weather may impact their operations. Now web-based, CREAT gives utilities a way to evaluate potential impacts to their assets using both traditional risk assessment and scenar- io-based decision making. The tool also provides data and plots for comparing local historical condi- tions with downscaled climate model projections for the future. CREAT helps users identify threats based on regional differences in climate change projections and designing adaptation plans based on the types of threats being considered. Following assessment, CREAT pro- vides a series of risk reduction and cost reports that enable the user to evaluate various adaptation options as part of long-term planning. CREAT also provides monetized risk results, which promotes a common and mutual understanding of climate change impacts. With this powerful in- formation, utility owners and operators can make advancements to curtail the impacts of climate change, particularly by implementing no-regrets adaption options—those that provide benefits regardless of future climate conditions. Output from CREAT helps utilities organize and communicate the risks from climate impacts and potential gains from adaptation to decision mak- ers, stakeholders, and citizens. CREAT has import capacity and integrates with our Resilient Strategies Guide, as well as EPA’s Vulnerability Self-Assessment Tool (VSAT). Community drinking water systems using VSAT to comply with the risk and resilience assessment requirement in Section 2013 of America’s Water Infrastructure Act can now import their VSAT results directly into CRE- AT to assess the long-term impacts of their natural disaster threat. By registering to access this web- based tool, you can: ✓ Find out which extreme weather events pose significant challenges to your utility and build scenarios to identify potential impacts. ✓ Identify your critical assets and the actions you can take to protect them from the consequences of extreme weather events on utility operations. ✓ Generate reports describing the costs and benefits of your risk reduction strategies for decision makers and stakeholders. www.epa.gov All the virtual conference sessions including contact information for the speakers, have been posted on PMAA’s website in the Virtual Training section. The CREAT tool was a part of the Complying with America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 session presented by Rulison Evans of GHD, Inc. Go to PMAA’s website for addi- tional information and valuable resources.