The Gulf states are experiencing more intense rainfall and increasingly frequent flooding, as well as longer droughts that stress communities and ecosystems. It is crucial that water resources practitioners, policy makers, and communities at large are equipped with the precipitation information they need to make water resources and transportation infrastructure more resilient to changes in rainfall patterns and their consequences in flooding and subsequent effects. 

This session will discuss the update to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) precipitation frequency estimate, Atlas 15, and explore the ways in which transportation professionals can use the product to improve and make climate-smart decisions around flood risk assessment and infrastructure design. It will cover the significant changes to Atlas 15 compared to Atlas 14, demonstrate the new web interface, discuss how this new dataset will address needs shared by end-users. We will also present a range of use cases to showcase possible ways communities can adopt this data and tool use to support their resilience.