A web-based screening model for climate risk to water supply systems in the northeastern United States

The aim of this study is to describe the development and application of a web-based decision support tool (ViRTUE) for performing climate risk evaluations of water supply systems. The tool is designed for small-scale water utilities in the northeastern United States that may lack the resources for detailed climate change risk investigations. Development of this tool demonstrates a relatively new approach to web application development using the Shiny framework for the R programming language to create an interactive environment for stakeholders and water managers to explore climate vulnerabilities. Using a decision-scaling framework, the tool allows the user to perform a climate stress test to evaluate the performance and vulnerability to water supply shortfalls of local reservoir systems over a wide range of potential climate change scenarios using a generic systems model. Probabilities of future climate conditions derived from climate projections then help inform utility operators of impending risk.