Earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be “among the strongest on record” as climate change continues to drive more extreme weather events. As the number of extreme weather events caused by rising ocean temperatures and other impacts of climate change continues to rise, so too are the costs – in some cases exponentially.

There is a growing consensus among government agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), as well as industry associations such as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), that local governments and state emergency management agencies must consider the cumulative impacts of disasters – whether weather-related or not – and quantify the costs associated with restoring critical infrastructure and buildings to working order after a disaster.

Most existing building codes currently focus on preventing fatalities rather than functionality, says Maria Lehman, former president of ASCE and vice chair of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council.

At a time when federal funds are flowing into new infrastructure projects at unprecedented levels, decision makers should be careful to use those funds wisely, says Aspasia “Sissy” Nikolaou, leader of the earthquake engineering group in NIST’s Materials and Structural Systems Division.

As of August 8, 19 climate- or weather-related disasters with damages exceeding $1 billion have occurred in the United States this year. That represents a significant increase in disasters over the past five years, but between 1983 and 2023 there were only an average of eight events per year, according to NOAA calculations.

A recent analysis by the National Academies examined the costs incurred by consecutive billion-dollar storms in the Gulf of Mexico between 2020 and 2021. The storms occurred while communities were still grappling with deaths, material shortages and other vulnerabilities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the period studied, communities barely recovered from one disaster before facing another, all while suffering the effects of the pandemic.

“This series of successive, sudden disasters has placed an increasing burden on a region with complex and persistent socio-economic and socio-environmental inequalities,” the report concludes.

For example, when Category 4 Hurricane Delta made landfall in October 2020, Cameron Parish in Louisiana was still trying to repair roofs and infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Laura five weeks earlier. Less than five months later, Winter Storm Uri froze tarps on roofs that could not be repaired after the previous storms and froze pipes, leaving many households without access to clean water.

“I think we have a big challenge: We have the bipartisan infrastructure bill and with it money, but if the money is not invested wisely, we’re going to have the same problems,” says NIST’s Nikolaou. “For me, it’s important to know what questions to ask” when making decisions about infrastructure investments, rather than thinking there’s an “optimal” approach, she says, because that could lead to missing the root of a potential problem in some areas.

Understanding how and where to invest requires accurate data on the true costs – not just the cost of replacing damaged infrastructure, but all costs, which can include the economic impact of lost work, hospital stays or lost revenue from toll roads when those roads are no longer passable, adds Lehman, who is also head of U.S. infrastructure at global consulting firm GHD.

Efforts are currently underway at NIST, the World Bank, and elsewhere to quantify the true costs more holistically.

Lehman points to a recent GHD study that found there is broad – if uneven – support for tackling climate change and reducing carbon emissions across generations in several countries. In total, 13,000 people of various ages in communities around the world were surveyed, including 4,000 people in the United States.

“If it makes so much more sense to build resilience right at the beginning of a project or series of projects, why don’t we do it?” asks Lehman.