Effects of sea level rise on non-motorized transportation
| Author(s) | Mohammadiziazi, Rezvan | |
| Date Accessioned | 2018-03-16T12:09:49Z | |
| Date Available | 2018-03-16T12:09:49Z | |
| Publication Date | 2017 | |
| SWORD Update | 2017-11-10T17:21:33Z | |
| Abstract | There are certain evidences that greenhouse gas emissions resulted from human activities have caused climate change. The intergovernmental panel for climate change (IPCC) has certified 0.2°C of increase in mean temperature per decade. Non-motorized transportation is considered not only as one of the major mitigation strategies to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions but also as solution to bring safety, livelihood and health back to urbanized communities. This proves the importance of identifying facilities that are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change to start adaptations as early as possible. Sea level rise and the associated increase in frequency and intensity of storm surges and flooding incidences are perhaps among the most worrying consequences of climate change, especially for coastal areas. ☐ Trails and bike routes are the non-motorized transportation facilities that are studied in this research. The distance of inundation (distance of trails and bike routes that will be under water), and the maximum depth of water on affected facilities are estimated by Geographic Information System (GIS) based analysis. The two measures then have been used to indicate the extent of vulnerability of facilities against sea level rise. Since there is a great amount of uncertainty around sea level rise (SLR), the analysis was done for three sea level rise projections. The result of this vulnerability assessment is reported as the level of service of each facility under different sea level rise projections. ☐ Number of damaged trails under the medium SLR projection shows an increase of 56.76% compared to the number of damaged trails under low SLR scenario. This percent increases to 78.9% when the comparison was done between low and high SLR projections. To investigate the severity of different projections, we compared the total distance of damaged trails. Analysis showed that there will be 60.95% increase in mileage of damaged trails under medium SLR scenario compared to low scenario and this percent will be 90.3% if the comparison is done between the lowest and the highest SLR projections. The analysis results for the bike routes showed that under the low scenario bike routes will not vanish. However, the number of damaged bike routes will increase by 50% if sea level rises 6 feet rather than 4 feet. Also, there will be a 55.48% increase in distance of damaged bike routes when the comparison is made between medium and high sea level rise projections. These drastic changes prove that management corporations should plan their adaptation strategies for the worst-case scenario because the gap between low and high future sea level rise projections is considerable. In addition, all the analysis results prove that as sea level rise projection gets higher the number of trails with lower level of service increases. | en_US |
| Advisor | Faghri, Ardeshir | |
| Degree | M.C.E. | |
| Department | University of Delaware, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering | |
| Unique Identifier | 1028747529 | |
| URL | http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/23094 | |
| Language | en | |
| Publisher | University of Delaware | en_US |
| URI | https://search.proquest.com/docview/2001291658?accountid=10457 | |
| Keywords | Applied sciences | en_US |
| Keywords | Social sciences | en_US |
| Title | Effects of sea level rise on non-motorized transportation | en_US |
| Type | Thesis | en_US |