Carnegie Mellon University

The Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation (CERCA)

CERCA is an interdisciplinary research center committed to developing a suite of novel methods, tools, and analyses needed to incorporate climate change impacts into engineering infrastructure designs and decision-making.

Headquartered in Carnegie Mellon University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, we bring together world-class engineering, climate science, social science, and public policy researchers from around the University and around the world to advance the state of knowledge in engineering and resilience for climate adaptation through cutting edge research. Our work will enhance resilience to increased threats, maximize societal co-benefits, and inform local, regional and national infrastructure decisions for effective and equitable climate change adaptation. We also will pursue innovation in engineering education to develop future practitioners, decisionmakers, and researchers, through our graduate concentration in Climate Change Adaptation for Infrastructure.

CERCA aims to:

  • Create tools and research outputs that will maximize infrastructure performance under climate change by developing adaptive capacity, understanding climate impacts, and assessing options and tradeoffs.
  • Use a systems approach that includes includes built, natural, and human responses to mitigating risks, searches for coupled emissions reductions and resilience opportunities, minimizes costs and environmental burdens, and maximizes life cycle performance of infrastructure under climate change.
  • Train the next generation of engineering human capital for climate resilience.

Academic Departments