Abstract Manager

Resilience planning is being recognized as a key need as climate changes. As extreme events like hurricanes, atmospheric rivers, and wildfire become more intense and frequent, quantifying how they will impact transportation infrastructure and those that use it is essential. 

AtkinsRéalis developed their award-winning City Simulator tool to address this concern. GIS-based, the tool creates a digital twin of a region and evolves over time to quantify future climate change impacts and find ways to mitigate and adapt.

In our North Carolina DOT study of the 190-mile stretch of US74 from Wilmington to Charlotte, NC, we developed a corridor-wide digital twin comprising 4,200 culverts, bridges, and drainpipes, 6,500 miles of road, and 1.1 million people. We developed global climate model-based projections of rain, temperature, and sea level to drive the simulation of daily travel activities from 2020-2060. 

The team studied questions like where future flooding, heat waves, and sea level rise will be most damaging to infrastructure, productivity, and freight. They also investigated how future climate may impact the ability of transportation networks to serve disadvantaged populations and critical facilities like hospitals, shops, police stations. Finally, they tested several scenarios of mitigation actions that will both save on system operation costs and reduce downtime during climate change-influenced events.

Study findings will be presented along with a description of how the simulator was configured and animations of the simulator in action. Other applications for AtkinsRéalis City Simulator will also be highlighted in addition to this case study.