Climate Exchange

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Climate change adaptation:

when there is a will, there is a rail way!

Alexander Veitch and Camille Bailly, Sustainable Development Unit, International Union of Railways

espite efforts at mitigation, our climate is changing and

all sectors of the economy need to adapt to it, especially

large infrastructure managers and landowners like

the railway industry. Research and information sharing by the

International Union of Railways (UIC) illustrates that if the right

information is given in time to the right stakeholders, then good

adaptation strategies can be implemented, providing the possi-

bility to mitigate the consequences of climate change.

Railways have been forming part of our landscapes for years and,

as such, they have been constantly subject to the effects of the

weather. Now, due to climate change, railways are more than ever

exposed to hard weather conditions and thus, the need for adapta-

tion is growing urgently. To survive extreme weather and to recover

quickly from it, various strategies have been implemented by differ-

ent railway companies aimed at coping with the impacts of flooding,

storms and gales, intense short-time-period rainfall, extended rain

periods, thunderstorms, hot temperatures and changing vegetation.

ransport

and

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ARISCC project

Following an initial feasibility study, which revealed

how much its members were willing to implement

adaptation strategies, UIC launched the Adaptation of

Railway Infrastructure to Climate Change (ARISCC)

project, which found good practice examples and

case studies of adaptation plans and made recom-

mendations on how to develop these strategies. One

prerequisite for adaptation strategies in the railways,

or indeed any other sector, is high-quality forecasts

of likely future climate conditions, which in turn

requires close cooperation with national meteorologi-

cal associations.

Developing an adaptation plan

The ARISCC project team devised a clear process to

guide railways through the process of developing their

adaption plans. The first proposed step is to create a

Vulnerability Map, which requires combining extreme

weather and natural hazards data (using historical

records, daily information and future forecasts), and

overlaying this against parts of the railway network

vulnerable to these extreme conditions.

To achieve the first step (the identification of possi-

ble hazards), it is recommended to use past weather

information and natural hazard information to find the

most risky areas of the railway network. Railways can

be informed by climate institutions or in many cases

keep their own records. This information can be stored

in geographic information systems (GIS) to enable

overlaying with other data sources. Railways also store

a vast amount of data on historical weather and natural

hazards – for example, Austrian and Swiss railways

hold GIS databases of rockslides and avalanches over

several decades.

In addition to past weather and natural hazard data,

it is vital to have accurate and up-to-date weather

information. Most railways have close working rela-

tionships with their national meterological agencies,

and some actually collect their own weather data.

The East Japan Railway Company, JR East, installed

a monitoring system composed of an anemometer, a

water gauge, a seismographic, a landslide detector,

a snow gauge, a rail temperature gauge and a scour-

ing detector. All data are sent to the Office of Climate

Change, and monitored there in one centralized loca-

Many railways need to cope with Nordic conditions

Image: UIC