The region’s critical infrastructure, already struggling with the effects of age and underinvestment, is also facing additional threats from climate change. Superstorm Sandy demonstrated how flooding from storms can wreak havoc on the power, transportation, wastewater, telecommunications, and social-service systems, but the gradual rise of sea levels also threatens to inundate dozens of critical facilities in the coming decades. Higher temperatures and more-intense precipitation can also exacerbate existing weaknesses in our infrastructure. The region must not only upgrade and repair assets like power plants and wastewater treatment facilities to withstand the threats of climate change, but also redesign critical systems like energy and telecommunications so that disruptions are as limited as possible, and do not lead to cascading failures across multiple systems.
