“It’s a drumbeat in the office to really try to broaden people’s knowledge base about what these [climate-related] risks are in the future,” says Susanne DesRoches, deputy director for infrastructure policy at the ORR. “We want to push engineers and architects to think more holistically about climate risks.”

The document, which was released as a preliminary draft and will be refined before its final version is published in December 2017, is dedicated to design strategies for minimizing impacts of extreme heat, extreme precipitation, flooding, and storm surges–some of the major weather-related risks New York faces in the future, according to the most recent climate-change projections. (Most building codes reference historical data.)

The guidelines are meant to be instructive–a road map that details how the urban fabric will need to dramatically change over the next few decades to cope with the reality of climate change: By 2050, the average temperature is expected to increase between 4.1 and 6.6°F; the number of annual heat waves are expected to triple to between five and seven a year; and the annual precipitation is expected to increase between 4% and 13%.

To develop the guidelines, DesRoches and her team worked closely with different city agencies responsible for capital projects throughout the city (think parks, transportation, energy, telecommunications, water, and sewer) in order to understand their design and construction needs. They also looked at climate-change best practices from dozens of cities–such as Boston, San Francisco, and Miami–to figure out what made the most sense for New York. While climate resiliency is a general priority for many coastal cities, few have specific design guidelines outlined like New York’s. Hoboken, New Jersey, issued climate resiliency design guidelines in 2015, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued its own design guidelines the same year.

What do these changes mean for the physical composition of New York? Potentially more shading and cooling systems in buildings; new materials and landscaping that encourage storm water infiltration, like permeable pavement and bioswales; materials and finishes that reduce the urban heat island effect, like cool roofs, green roofs, and living walls; passive cooling to help reduce the need for energy on hot days; and new flood protection systems.

Rather than being overly prescriptive, these guidelines are intended to be a tool to help agencies, their architects, and engineers approach climate change consistently using the most appropriate data and projections that apply to a project.