Reengineering Infrastructure For A Wetter Wisconsin

Flooding throughout the Midwest, including Wisconsin, is dangerous, costly and becoming a more frequent occurrence. Over the last few years, bridges and roads have washed away during flash floods in the northern part of the state, and in places like Madison, floodwaters took weeks to recede after heavy rainstorms in 2018. But how can engineers tackle the problem in order to prevent this kind of infrastructure damage in the future?

Daniel Wright is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His areas of research include extreme rainfall and its effects on flooding, modeling the potential effects of heavy precipitation in different landscapes, and projecting the role of climate change in these risks. Wright is also working with colleagues in the Wisconsin Initiative On Climate Change Impacts in an infrastructure working group to develop approaches that take floods and climate change into consideration for engineering and planning purposes....