Adapting railways to provide resilience and sustainability

The reality of anthropogenic climate change is increasingly apparent, with significant implications for railway and other infrastructure networks. As a transport mode with a relatively small environmental impact, rail has a potentially valuable role to play in climate change mitigation. However, thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Engineering sustainability 2017-08, Vol.170 (4), p.225-234
Main Authors: Armstrong, John, Preston, John, Hood, Ian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Anthropogenic factors
Classification
Climate
Climate change
Climate change mitigation
Climate effects
Climatology
Cost benefit analysis
Cost engineering
Costs
Decision support systems
Disruption
Economic impact
Environmental impact
Extreme weather
Frameworks
Freight traffic
Government
Human influences
Literature reviews
Mitigation
Passengers
Railroads
Railway networks
Railways
Resilience
Sustainability
Traffic
Transportation networks
Weather
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Summary:The reality of anthropogenic climate change is increasingly apparent, with significant implications for railway and other infrastructure networks. As a transport mode with a relatively small environmental impact, rail has a potentially valuable role to play in climate change mitigation. However, this potential can be realised only if railways are adapted to withstand the effects of the increasingly extreme weather associated with climate change. This requirement is widely acknowledged by governments and the railway industry, and the required responses to the specific potential effects of climate change are well known and understood. However, a review of the literature indicates a need for a decision support system to prioritise the interventions required for the adaptation in the face of uncertainty about both the frequency and scale of future extreme weather events and the nature and the levels of future passenger and freight traffic on the railways. This paper proposes a seven-step framework for the classification of the UK railway network, the assessment of the economic value of traffic using the network (and thus the economic costs of weather-related disruption), the identification of appropriate remedial measures and their costs and thus the prioritisation of these measures by means of cost–benefit analysis.
ISSN:1478-4629
1751-7680
DOI:10.1680/jensu.15.00017