Connect with MIT Office of Sustainability
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E38-346
Cambridge, MA 02139
Learn more about MIT's climate work
The challenges of sustainability are both local and global. Creating transformative solutions requires deep collaboration among community leaders and members on campus, city and global scales.
MIT is working collaboratively to address the risks of climate change and its anticipated impacts on the campus and community, including more frequent flooding, extreme precipitation, rising sea levels, and extreme and prolonged heat events.
MIT uses the City of Cambridge projections as a planning basis for campus resiliency and adaptation because these represent the best available, locally-scaled projections; align the campus with local regulatory resiliency planning standards; and enable effective planning across campus and City scales. MIT will continue to evaluate new and emerging research to inform its climate resiliency and adaptation planning.
Flood projections from the City of Cambridge Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Climate Resilient Plan downscale projections from global climate models and show that the most immediate and near-term flood risk facing MIT is the increase in frequency of extreme rainfall which can cause urban surface flooding by overwhelming stormwater infrastructure. By 2070, compared to today, the City of Cambridge is likely to experience:
This graphic below illustrates how today’s “100 year” or 1% annual probability event yielded about 8” of rain over 24 hours during the rainfall baseline averages of 1971 through 2000. Under a changing climate, 8” of rain over 24 hours is projected to become much more common by 2070 with a frequency closer to a “25 year” or 4% annual probability of return. Similar shifts are anticipated with today’s 4% annual probability storm becoming closer to a 10% annual probability event by 2070.
Changing flood predictions for Cambridge (City of Cambridge, Climate Vulnerability Assessment, 2015)
Fellows, researchers, climate modelers, scientists, and engineers at MIT and in Cambridge and Boston are helping inform data-driven flood risk planning for the campus and region. Explore MIT's Climate Resiliency Dashboard, an informational tool enabling the MIT community to understand risk to the Cambridge campus from flooding under both today's climate and a future, changed climate.
Informed by the MIT Flood Vulnerability Study , Building Porosity Hunt, and Sustainability Stormwater and Landscape Ecology Plan, MIT has prepared a campus-based flood risk model that integrates campus flood risk modeling with the City of Cambridge Flood Risk Model. This combined model provides a comprehensive understanding of current and future risks to a range of flood scenarios including precipitation, riverine, sea level rise and storm surge events. Since MIT is also undergoing a significant capital renewal, this dynamic two-dimensional model is also serving as an adaptive planning tool for informing current and future flood risk based on new campus growth. The model is updated every three years.
The first Charles River Dam (built 1910) in Cambridge currently protects the MIT campus from Boston Harbor storm surges and extreme high tides. However, the dam is at risk of being overtopped by a storm surge compounded by rising sea levels within 20 to 30 years because the design did not account for sea level rise due to a changing climate—–which for the Boston Harbor area could be a 1-foot1 rise by 2030 and 4 feet by 2070.
The City of Cambridge has been working with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and other municipalities and stakeholders in the region, regarding the potential for strategic interventions that reduce regional flood exposure and benefit Cambridge and 14 other municipalities. Planning and design are is already in progress for several of the 10 interventions, led by individual communities.
A hurricane or nor'easter (fall/winter) that blows a surge of water from the ocean into Boston Harbor and around or overtop the Charles River dam, pushing river water up MIT/Cambridge drainage pipes and surcharge into streets. This is a probable event beyond 2050 and would impact the Boston region.
The dashboard seeks to translate the science of local climate risks into maps and graphics that can raise awareness and inform operational and strategic decision-making about campus-wide planning, capital renewal, new capital projects, and community preparedness.
