For much of history, the past guided builders’ designs. In a stable environment, this usually worked. Roman aqueducts carried water for centuries, and China’s Grand Canal still helps transport river traffic. But in a changing climate, the past may prove insufficient.

Gabriele Villarini, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, is developing techniques to help design infrastructure that accounts for challenges posed by a changing climate. His work concentrates on hydrology, particularly river systems.

In recent work, Villarini’s team collaborated with colleagues at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Defense to examine how changing water levels in the Mississippi River have impacted shipping. In another project, Villarini’s research group predicted that climate change will drive noticeable changes in flood peaks across the continental United States, especially for higher greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. In an article in Nature Communications, they projected that changing temperatures and precipitation levels will increase flooding in the Northeast and Southeast, while flooding will decrease in the Southwest and the Northern Great Plains.

“As an engineer, you look at historical data, generally assuming the future will be comparable to the past,” Villarini said. “But what if the future is different?”