The Growing Threat of Flooding on Transportation Infrastructure Across Texas Through 2100

2026

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DOI 10.1029/2026ef008207
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

Abstract Flooding poses an escalating threat to transportation resilience, yet existing regulatory hazard maps often suffer from incomplete coverage and rely on static historical data, leaving vast infrastructure networks exposed to unquantified risks. We bridge this gap for Texas—a hydro‐geomorphologically diverse state with aging infrastructure—under a changing climate through 2100 using a multicriteria decision analysis framework. We explicitly quantify and account for the epistemic, spatial, and scale‐dependent uncertainties at 30 m spatial resolution through coupled Monte Carlo simulations‐based spatial perturbation, and multi‐scale modeling. Approximately 25% of the state (163,620 km 2 ) currently ranks moderate to very high in susceptibility; containing nearly 50% of the state's roads and railroads and 80% of its bridges. We find that dense concentration of transportation infrastructure in flood susceptible urban centers amplifies systemic vulnerability, risking emergency service failures and escalating financial damages. Crucially, comparisons with regulatory maps reveal that our analysis identifies critical high‐risk zones, often unmapped by FEMA, particularly in rapidly developing peri‐urban areas. Overall, driven solely by projected climatic shifts, the area susceptible to flooding in Texas will increase 10%–12% (60,024–90,206 km 2 additional land) by 2100 across three Shared Socio‐economic Pathways (SSP), indicating a significant increase in flood exposure across the state. Consequently, the exposure of existing transportation assets rises by 10.5%–15.4% (58,224–85,000 km of additional roads). Our findings provide a scalable screening tool to inform future adaptation and mitigation measures to protect transportation infrastructure in Texas from increasingly severe flood events under rapidly evolving socio‐economic and climatic conditions.