Climate change and seismic resilience: Key considerations for Alaska’s infrastructure and built environment

RESEARCH ARTICLE Climate change and seismic resilience: Key considerations for Alaska’s infrastructure and built environment Matthew M. Turner1, Majid GhayoomiID2*, Katharine Duderstadt3, Jennifer Brewer4, Alexander Kholodov5 1 Parsons Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States of America, 3 Earth Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States of America, 4 Department of Geography, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States of America, 5 Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, United States of America * Majid.Ghayoomi@unh.edu Abstract Alaska is one of the most seismically active regions of the world. Coincidentally, the state has also experienced dramatic impacts of climate change as it is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the United States. Through mechanisms such as permafrost thaw, water table fluctuation, and melting of sea ice and glaciers, climatic-driven changes to the natural and built-environment influence the seismic response of infrastructure systems. This paper dis- cusses the challenges and needs posed by earthquake hazards and climate change to Alas- ka’s infrastructure and built environment, drawing on the contributions of researchers and decision-makers in interviews and a workshop. It outlines policy, mitigation, and adaptation

areas meriting further attention to improve the seismic resilience of Alaska’s built environ- ment from the perspectives of engineering and complementary coupled human-environ- mental systems. Introduction The state of Alaska is highly vulnerable to the compound impacts of earthquakes and climate change. Since the 1960s, the direct financial cost of earthquakes and ensuing tsunamis in Alaska has far outweighed that of all other non-human-caused disasters combined [1]. Seismic impacts include coastal inundation, topographic rupture, mass movement of landslides and rockfalls, and soil liquefaction. Two of the most damaging earthquakes in 1964 (commonly referred to as the Great Alaskan Earthquake) and 2018 (commonly referred to as the Anchor- age Earthquake) highlight the fragility of Alaska’s infrastructure, the former resulting in 115 deaths [2] (mainly from the ensuing tsunami) and about US$2.8 billion (in 2022 dollars) in estimated damages [3] and the latter causing significant damage to roads, railroad lines, and buildings [4, 5]. Examples of the damage caused by the 2018 Anchorage, Alaska Earthquake can be seen in Fig 1A and 1B. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292320 October 18, 2023 1 / 17 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Turner MM, Ghayoomi M, Duderstadt K, Brewer J, Kholodov A (2023) Climate change and seismic resilience: Key considerations for Alaska’s infrastructure and built environment. PLoS ONE 18(10): e0292320. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0292320

Editor: Nazanin Tajik, Mississippi State University, UNITED STATES Received: November 4, 2022 Accepted: September 18, 2023 Published: October 18, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Turner et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Transcribed interview data will be stripped of all personal or identifying information and will be archived in the Harvard Dataverse for public access and long-term preservation. Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant ICER-2022589. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the