Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance Statewide Resilience Master Plan
As the prime consultant, Weston & Sampson provided professional consulting services for the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management & Maintenance’s (DCAMM’s) Statewide Resilience Master Plan (SRMP) project. The purpose of the project was to review the DCAMM portfolio’s vulnerability to climate impacts and develop resiliency design guidelines to help DCAMM prepare and plan for climate change impacts, including coastal flooding, inland flooding, extreme heat, drought, landslides, wind, winter storms, and wildfires. As part of our efforts, we developed a process for addressing climate change adaptation and implementing resilient design for the thousands of DCAMM facilities across the state. The SRMP tasks completed include:
- Reviewing 8,000+ state assets and developing portfolio screening tools
- Working with DCAMM stakeholders to identify representative Commonwealth assets
- Designing criteria for assessing criticality to apply to portfolio and selecting representative assets to perform a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA)
- Establishing climate scenarios and a planning horizon for climate change projections
- Evaluating vulnerability and risk to climate impacts for 57 state-owned facilities
- Developing a prioritization matrix to identify pilot sites for a site-specific RVA
- Designing a site-specific living scorecard (i.e., a Facility Checklist) that considers existing conditions, climate parameters, and building system criticality using Weston & Sampson’s iDataCollectSM mobile platform
- Performing a site-specific RVA for 3 pilot sites using the Facility Checklist and identifying priority systems
- Conducting three pilot site workshops with stakeholders and facility managers to discuss the results of the RVA and the site-specific RVAs, and introduce general and site-specific adaptation strategies
- Developing site-specific adaptation strategies/methodology that connects the RVA process to risk mitigation
- Producing general resiliency design guidelines and a vulnerability scorecard for planning and development
In creating guidelines for implementing structural retrofits and improvements, this SRMP laid the groundwork for DCAMM to implement resilient design on future projects and ensure service continuity for constituents, and Weston & Sampson’s development of the site-specific facility checklist proved instrumental to the RVA process. Adaptation strategies included infrastructure repairs and upgrades; land acquisition, management, and protection; and enhancement of natural systems. In addition, our team coordinated and collaborated with various local, state, and federal agencies throughout the development of the master plan.