2023 State of the Market Report
Resiliency to Climate Change
Increasing climate change is leading to intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms, and declining biodiversity. All these matters directly impact future planning and construction considerations for stormwater and wastewater municipal managers in order to build resiliency to climate-driven events.
The cost of repairing and replacing stormwater and wastewater infrastructure is a top concern for municipal managers, and the aforementioned climate variation paired with population growth is stressing the capacity of these systems.
Severe weather planning has become more critical and climate change is a significant driving factor in design considerations. Actions to address these issues will be based on confidence in the system and its budget, pinpointing effective outreach methods, and leveraging trusted information sources for public outreach.
The 2023 State of the Market Report: Resiliency to Climate Change, examines the condition of stormwater and wastewater infrastructure throughout the United States; assesses concerns relating to climate variation, weather events, water quality, and resource impacts; and pinpoints effective mitigation strategies for the existing and emerging challenges.
Survey respondents represent decision-makers and influencers for climate change response. The majority of survey respondents work for a municipal, county, state, or federal government agency. Others are engineers, consultants, contractors, and people who work at construction firms, government agencies dealing with surface water quality, non-government enterprises, and utilities.
Municipally-owned and operated organizations as well as private and investor-owned operations represent the largest percentage of places in which respondents work, while industrial and other entities comprise the workplaces of the other respondents. Most of the respondents serve a medium-sized population base of 10,001 to 100,000, followed by small areas of up to 10,000, large areas of 100,001 to one million, and metropolitan areas of more than one million.
The 2023 State of the Market Report: Resiliency to Climate Change examines infrastructure challenges, the impact of climate change and weather events, present-day responses to those challenges, and mitigation strategies.