The effect of modeling choices on updating intensity-duration-frequency curves and stormwater infrastructure designs for climate change

Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves, commonly used in stormwater infrastructure design to represent characteristics of extreme rainfall, are gradually being updated to reflect expected changes in rainfall under climate change. The modeling choices used for updating lead to large uncertainties; however, it is unclear how much these uncertainties affect the design and cost of stormwater systems. This study investigates how the choice of spatial resolution of the regional climate model (RCM) ensemble and the spatial adjustment technique affect climate-corrected IDF curves and resulting stormwater infrastructure designs in 34 US cities for the period 2020 to 2099. In most cities, IDF values are significantly different between three spatial adjustment techniques and two RCM spatial resolutions. These differences have the potential to alter the size of stormwater systems designed using these choices and affect the results of climate impact modeling more broadly. The largest change in the engineering decision results when the design storm is selected from the upper bounds of the uncertainty distribution of the IDF curve, which changes the stormwater pipe design size by five increments in some cases, nearly doubling the cost. State and local agencies can help reduce some of this variability by setting guidelines, such as avoiding the use of the upper bound of the future uncertainty range as a design storm and instead accounting for uncertainty by tracking infrastructure performance over time and preparing for adaptation using a resilience plan.