Utilities Use CREAT to Compare Threats & Consequences

EPA’s Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT) is risk assessment software that assists drinking water and wastewater utility owners and operators in understanding potential climate change impacts and in assessing the related risks at their utilities. CREAT allows users to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on their utility and to evaluate adaptive options to address these impacts using both traditional risk assessment and scenario-based decision making.   EPA has been piloting CREAT with utilities — large and small, drinking water and wastewater — around the nation.  Check out the attached one page summary to see how 10 utilities that participated in the pilot used CREAT to meet their own individual needs.
CREAT can be useful for utilities that are just beginning to consider how climate change will impact them and would like to learn more about the threats they should be concerned with.  CREAT can also be helpful for those utilities that have already identified projections and threats, and would like to evaluate their adaptation plans.  Within CREAT, downscaled climate projections and an adaptation library are provided to help jump start the planning process.  As users complete the assessment, they can download the results into reports and spreadsheets to share with management and to track progress.
CREAT is not a static tool.  It’s currently in the process of being updated to a new version 3.0., anticipated for release in 2015.  The new version will include migration to a web-based platform, support for additional climate and other types of data, increased support for planning (e.g., asset management, capital and infrastructure planning) and the potential to dovetail climate adaptation planning with other types of planning (e.g., sustainability).  You can download the current 2.0 version from EPA’s website at http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/watersecurity/climate/creat.cfm.
 
Attachment — CREAT Application by Utilities