New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is North America’s largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. While the MTA has made significant investments in the resiliency of its systems, it remains vulnerable to a variety of climate risks. Notably, the underground subway system remains vulnerable to stormwater flash flooding from heavy rain. The purpose of the field visit is to review the MTA’s current “toolkit” of flood mitigation devices and understand why they can’t be used to address all locations with stormwater flooding concerns.

The workshop will be in the form of a Design Sprint. In a Design Sprint, teams will work to understand the problem and collaborate to design novel solutions and quickly develop prototypes to be presented to the stakeholders. The result of the Design Sprint offers a starting point for further development of the concept by the participants. This is a great opportunity to realize the concepts that have been developed.