Climate Resilience Evaluation & Awareness Tool (CREAT)

• Download CREAT
• Climate Ready Water Utilities (CRWU) Home | CRWU Tools & Resources | CREAT Training

EPA has developed CREAT, a software tool to assist drinking water and wastewater utility owners and operators in understanding potential climate change threats and in assessing the related risks at their individual utilities. CREAT provides users with access to the most recent national assessment of climate change impacts for use in considering how these changes will impact utility operations and missions.

CREAT allows users to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on their utility and to evaluate adaptation options to address these impacts using both traditional risk assessment and scenario-based decision making. CREAT provides libraries of drinking water and wastewater utility assets (e.g., water resources, treatment plants, pump stations) that could be impacted by climate change, possible climate change-related threats (e.g., flooding, drought, water quality), and adaptive measures that can be implemented to reduce the impacts of climate change. The tool guides users through identifying threats based on regional differences in climate change projections and designing adaptation plans based on the types of threats being considered. Following assessment, CREAT provides a series of risk reduction and cost reports that will allow the user to evaluate various adaptation options as part of long-term planning.

• For more information see Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool Fact Sheet (PDF) (2 pp, 245K)
• For CREAT training, visit the Climate Ready Water Utilities page, CREAT training tab

To run CREAT, the following minimum system hardware and software requirements must be met:              

• IBM PC compatible processor           
• CD-ROM drive          
• 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended)        
• 250MB of available Hard Disk Space           
• Microsoft^© Windows 2000, Microsoft^© Windows XP SP3, or Microsoft^© Windows 7      
• 1024 x 768 pixels minimum screen resolution
• Microsoft^© Word 2003 and Excel 2003 or later (necessary to generate reports)
• Microsoft^© Internet Explorer 6.0 or later

Note: It is highly recommended that users go to the Microsoft website and download the most current updates for their operating system.