Climate change impact on water structures

Abstract

The literature is full of global warming and climate change impact studies on the environment, ecosystem, and different components of hydrological cycle. Unfortunately, these impacts on engineering structure design, maintenance, and operation and management studies are rather rare. Climate change impact started to play significant role since the last three decades almost in every aspects of life especially on meteorological and climatological events and their impacts on water resources, which are managed by engineering structures. Its effects on hydrometeorological records are searched with objective methodologies quantitatively, but the same is not valid for engineering water structures performances among which are dams, weirs, reservoirs, culverts, channels, bridges, wells, highways and their side drainages, levees, etc. This paper provides the review of the necessary adaptation, combat and mitigation activities against the climate change and variability for protection, construction or augmentation of the engineering water structures design capacity. Land use practices and geomorphological changes also trigger the climate change impacts on the engineering water structures. The main aim of this paper is to present the impact of such changes on the engineering water structure capacity, operation and maintenance.