Climate Exchange

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ransport

and

nfrastructure

From vulnerability mapping to risk management

Once the vulnerability mapping is completed, it is possi-

ble to carry out a risk evaluation relating to elements

such as property, people, environment, reputation and

finances. Having analysed the most endangered areas,

railways can then act concretely by taking preventive

and reactive measures. They can have a better weather

warning system, improve technical standards, reinforce

protective structures, take measures during incidents

which aim at minimizing damage by rapid and targeted

intervention, and improve resilience with more specific

engineering recommendations.

With the right information given in time, rail-

ways have many ways to handle new hazards created

by climate change. All these good practices can be

exchanged to enable widespread information and act as

a model for those who want to adapt to climate change.

Improving reliability

Tomorrow’s Railways and Climate Change Adaptation

(TRaCCA) was a research project aimed at providing

tools and knowledge to improve the reliability of the

railway network and at finding solutions to these prob-

lems. To do so, Britain’s Network Rail collaborated with

experts at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, enabling

the company to prioritize and scope exercises to meet

statutory reporting deadlines aligned to Control Period

5 work covering the 2020s, 2030s and 2040s. Network

Rail used detailed climate impact analyses on the

selected priorities and implemented various tools.

Improving resilience

There are many practical ways in which railways

are making their networks more resilient to extreme

weather and natural hazards.

Wind

To face strong winds and gales, JR East equipped its

tracks with windbreak fences.

Humid conditions

To manage hard rains, JR East decided to reinforce slopes

and to protect scours. Train manufacturers are develop-

ing systems to cope with hot and humid conditions by

managing air-flow, protecting the electronic control panel

and installing condensers in the machines area.

Desert conditions

It is also possible to prepare railways infrastructure

to resist desert conditions through measures such as

equipping rolling stock with cyclonic filters, resizing

the electronic equipment, cooling the power supply

system or power converter and reinforcing the air-

conditioning system.

Nordic conditions

Many railways companies need to handle Nordic

conditions. For instance, JR East now benefits from

anti-avalanche facilities and good snow removal equip-

tion. With the information, JR East can decide to restrict speed

or suspend traffic, to protect the passengers and infrastructures.

The weather information enables companies to act quickly.

For example, the Austrian company OBB launched a programme

called InfraWeather. The preparative work included the develop-

ment of a regional, meteorological model and GIS-based overlay

of railway tracks and meteorological data. Thanks to all this infor-

mation, OBB now has an online portal giving the storm, flood and

snowfall forecast.

When predefined warning levels are reached, alert message are

automatically generated by the system and sent by text messages,

email, fax and telephone to all responsible people inside the company.

This allows more efficiency, improves management, saves costs

and achieves the capacity building process.

The final piece of the jigsaw in terms of weather and natural

hazard information is future climate and weather forecasts. This is

the point at which meteorological organizations become crucial to

the planning and future condition of the railway, as only they can

provide this data. One challenge is to achieve the right level of detail

in both temporal and spatial terms: climate adaptation is primarily

a local issue, affecting very specific parts of the railway network.

However, climate models tend to provide an overview on a regional

or national scale. Also, railway infrastructure (track, signals, trains)

lasts a long time (parts of the European railway network are well

over 100 years old), and so it is important to have a reasonably long-

term approach to climate forecasting.

Moving on from the weather and natural hazard data gathering,

the vulnerability map then requires the identification of the rail-

ways’ infrastructure assets in areas prone to hazards, and assessing

the likely resilience of these assets. Overlaying the natural hazard

zones and the areas where the infrastructure assets (such as, track,

earthworks, bridges, tunnels, drainage systems, protective structures

and signalling) are in a poor condition, it is possible to identify the

priority zones.

Increasing summer temperatures take their toll on existing rail infrastructure

Image: Network Rail