Implications of climate change for railway infrastructure

Abstract

Weather phenomena can result in severe impacts on railway infrastructure. In future, projected changes to the frequency and/or intensity of extreme weather events could change weather–infrastructure risk profiles. Infrastructure owners and operators need to manage current weather impacts and put in place adequate plans to anticipate and adapt to changes in future weather risks, or mitigate the impacts arising from those risks. The assessment of the risk posed to railway infrastructure from current and future weather is dependent on a good understanding of the constituent components of risk: hazard, vulnerability, and exposure. A good understanding of the baseline and projected future risk is needed in order to understand the potential benefits of various climate change adaptation actions. Traditional risk assessment methods need some modification in order to be applied to climate change timescales, for which decisions need to be made under deep uncertainty. This review paper highlights some key challenges for assessing the risk, including: managing uncertainties; understanding weather‐impact relationships and how they could change with climate change; assessing the costs of current and future weather impacts and the potential cost versus benefit of adaptation; and understanding practices and tools for adapting railway infrastructure. The literature reveals examples of progress and good practice in all these areas, providing scope for effective knowledge‐sharing—across the railway infrastructure and other sectors—in support of infrastructure resilience and adaptation. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change

Pandemijos Poveikis Transporto Sektoriaus Verslo Aplinkai

“…Railway undertakings are already feeling the growing market demand for international rail passenger services. In order to foster the development of an international market for passenger services, it is considered that the EU should aim to create an interoperable European high-speed network connecting European capitals and major cities and hubs and airports (Palin et al, 2021). EU cities are responsible for a number of transport policies, such as public trans-port, car-sharing, congestion charging, car park management, and cycling and pedestrian zones, which contribute to a neutral modal approach.…”

Assessing Risk to the National Critical Functions as a Result of Climate Change

“…These effects are anticipated to cause minimal disruption through 2100. These climate drivers can damage infrastructure directly, or they can affects the surrounding areas (e.g., via landslides or slope failure) (Palin et al, 2021). Extreme heat can cause rail track to buckle, leading to unsafe conditions, and the need to run trains more slowly can increase overall operating costs (Chinowsky et al, 2019).…”

“…Extreme heat can cause rail track to buckle, leading to unsafe conditions, and the need to run trains more slowly can increase overall operating costs (Chinowsky et al, 2019). Some rail infrastructure is more than 150 years old and was built prior to development of modern engineering standards, making its resilience to climate effects uncertain (Palin et al, 2021). However, these effects tend to be very localized, and the rail network is spread throughout the country.…”

Adapting Railway Maintenance to Climate Change

“…However, the findings of these investigations are not being applied by the railway stakeholders because of numerous challenges and barriers, such as knowledge and awareness about climate change impacts, shortage of capital investment, the nonexistence of policies, shortage of resources and time, etc. [22,23]. Moreover, it is difficult to comprehend the impacts of climate change since it changes with geographical locations, and in many cases, there is a lack of studies of risk consequences and impact assessments for the region.…”

“…Finally, several methodologies have been implemented for climate adaptation of railway infrastructure in extreme weather events and climate change variation [22,43,58]. Hence, we also need to discuss and develop methods and methodologies to implement climate adaptation procedures for various stakeholders within the railway transport sector.…”