Civil engineers are responsible for the planning and design of functional, durable, and safe infrastructure. Floods and heavy precipitation events affect many types of civil engineering infrastructure. Engineering planning and design standards are based on various durations and magnitudes of these extreme precipitation events depending on the function of the infrastructure and the consequences of failure. Engineering design has historically assumed that the past observed record of precipitation extremes and flooding will be representative of the future. This assumption is questionable under a changing climate. However, projections of future climate are also uncertain. The ensemble of all existing global climate models represents only a fraction of the full range of potential future climate, and results can vary substantially between models. It is particularly problematic to project future heavy precipitation extremes and to estimate probabilities associated with these future events.
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