National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Adaptation Programs

NASA takes its climate risk management and climate adaptation efforts seriously because 66% of NASA’s physical assets are within 16 feet of sea level and are potentially exposed to storm surge.   NASA has undertaken voluntary risk management workshops at its installations using 12-km resolution downscaled climate information (CMIP3) for SRES scenarios A1B and B1.  These workshops have focused on three major systems:  (1) people-community, (2) natural environment, (3) built environment.  Another major effort concerns NASA’s 2012 Climate Risk Management Plan and Report that emphasize and apply business-management, risk management, and performance indicators approaches found in the literature.  There is a strong desire for NASA to have a climate risk plan that emulates and is comparable to the private sector in a cost-avoidance effort to save the taxpayers money in the plans development and implementation.  Currently, NASA is in the process of providing its installations with the most recent climate projection information (CMIP5) for the new scenarios RCP 8.5 and RCP 4.5.  Additionally, NASA’s climate risk management scope is expanding to explore two new areas:  (1) the procurement of goods and services, and (2) the “risk-based capital asset portfolio management” (its urgency is based on a financial-insurance insolvency risk perspective for extreme weather & climate events).