David Jaroszweski

The impact of climate change on urban transport resilience in a changing world.

The assessment of the potential impact of climate change on transport is an area of research very much in its infancy, and one that requires input from a multitude of disciplines including geography, engineering and technology, meteorology, climatology and futures studies. This paper investigates the current state of the art for assessments on urban surface transport, where rising populations and increasing dependence on efficient and reliable mobility have increased the importance placed on resilience to weather. The standard structure of climate change impact assessment (CIA) requires understanding in three important areas: how weather currently affects infrastructure and operations; how climate change may alter the frequency and magnitude of these impacts; and how concurrent technological and socio-economic development may shape the transport network of the future, either ameliorating or exacerbating the effects of climate change. The extent to which the requisite knowledge exists for a successful CIA is observed to decrease from the former to the latter. This paper traces a number of developments in the extrapolation of physical and behavioural relationships on to future climates, including a broad move away from previous deterministic methods and towards probabilistic projections which make use of a much broader range of climate change model output, giving a better representation of the uncertainty involved. Studies increasingly demand spatially and temporally downscaled climate projections that can represent realistic sub-daily fluctuations in weather that transport systems are sensitive to. It is recommended that future climate change impact assessments should focus on several key areas, including better representation of sub-daily extremes in climate tools, and recreation of realistic spatially coherent weather. Greater use of the increasing amounts of data created and captured by ‘intelligent infrastructure’ and ‘smart cities’ is also needed to develop behavioural and physical models of the response of transport to weather and to develop a better understanding of how stakeholders respond to probabilistic climate change impact projections.

Heavy rainfall and flood vulnerability of Singapore-Malaysia high speed rail system

Abstract Change of climate is unequivocal, and many of the observed changes are unprecedented over five decades to millennia. It is expected that the global atmosphere and ocean is increasingly getting warmer, the amount of ice on the earth is decreasing over the oceans, and the sea level has risen. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such temperature change is around 0.78 °C over decades. Without international collaboration towards Paris Agreement, the temperature change could potentially rise over 5.5°C in 2100. In addition, it is highly likely that even such a small change can trigger the worst of other extreme natural threats to interdependent urban and transport infrastructure systems. The vulnerability of those infrastructure systems has not been comprehensively addressed in open literature due to the fact that the actual climate change impact depends on specific differences of local environmental and geographical conditions. As a result, our research will highlight the extremes that can lead to system failure, degraded operation and ultimately, delays to train services. The emphasis is placed on the newly proposed Malaysia–Singapore high speed rail network, which can be affected by the most-frequent severe weather conditions including heavy rainfall and flash flood. It is found that tunnelling, steep cutting and ballast foundation are ones of the most vulnerable assets from a heavy rainfall or a flash flood.

Heat-Related Failures on Southeast England’s Railway Network: Insights and Implications for Heat Risk Management

AbstractHigh temperatures and heat waves can cause numerous problems for railway infrastructure, such as track buckling, sagging of overhead lines, and the failure of electrical equipment. Without adaptation, these problems are set to increase in a future warmer climate. This study used industry fault data to examine the temporal and spatial distribution of heat-related incidents in southeast England and produce a unique evidence base of the impact of temperature on the rail network. In particular, the analysis explored the concept of failure harvesting, whereby the infrastructure system becomes increasingly resilient to temperature over the course of the summer season (April–September) as the most vulnerable assets fail with each incremental rise in temperature. The analysis supports the hypothesis and clearly shows that a greater number of heat-related incidents occur in the early/midsummer season before reducing significantly, despite equivalently high temperatures. This failure harvesting and the cons...

Climate change and road freight safety: a multidisciplinary exploration

The freight and logistics sector is of significant importance as an enabler and driver of the global economy, but it is also inherently vulnerable to hazardous weather. Despite this, there is currently no quantitative assessment of how climate change may affect the sector. This paper applies multidisciplinary climate change impact assessment tools and conceptual frameworks to the road freight sector of Great Britain in order to identify potential future weather-related safety issues. Relationships between weather and freight accidents are determined using road accident data and meteorological observations, which are then used with climate change scenarios to arrive at projections of possible impacts across the regions of Great Britain. Included in the study are industry perceptions of future trends within the sector and wider economy which many affect freight’s exposure and sensitivity to weather. These are elicited through interviews and an iterative expert Delphi study. Hence, unlike many other climate change impact assessments, this innovative study takes into account the potentially significant impact of socio-economic change (including institutional and operational). The results show that summer precipitation and winter ice-related accidents are likely to decrease across most of the country, whereas winter rain-related accidents are projected to increase. However, it is postulated that some of the impacts of climate change will be modified by reflexive behavioural change on the part of the driver and either institutional adaptation or complacency on the part of the road authorities. The paper concludes by framing the study in a range of future scenarios outlining how the socio-economic environment could influence the road transport network and how it is used, modifying the impact of climate change.