How was this solved?

The solutions were developed in research project Tomorrow's Railway and Climate Change Adaptation (TRaCCA) (T1009).  Its overall objectives were to enhance and disseminate knowledge within the GB railway industry. Specifically, about how the UK climate and weather are projected to change in the future, the impacts these may have, and how the rail sector can respond.

Key findings included:

  • The impacts of climate variability demonstrate the need to include socioeconomic benefits when carrying out the economic appraisal of rail investment schemes.
  • By the end of the 21st century, the climate across Britain is projected to be similar to the current climate across parts of NW and SW Europe. There are parts of NW Europe that have railway that is broadly comparable with that in Britain.
  • GB railway is ahead of European and other national railways in terms of managing risk due to climate variability and understanding the vulnerability of our assets.
  • Prototype metrics have been proposed that can be used to assess the resilience of the railway as part of a wider transport system. New asset vulnerability tools have been demonstrated.
  • Climate change will impact asset life, requiring changes to railway standards and asset policies.
  • Infrastructure systems are inter-dependent, requiring a multi-agency response to climate change.

This important work, with comparable examples in other industries, provides information to enable planning to take place that will better prepare the network for the landscape scale changes we will face in the coming decades.

What were the outcomes?

  • A collection of data and resources has been compiled and a series of summary reports prepared and made available on SPARK.
  • Number of views of the full report: 122 times
  • Number of views of the executive summary 82.

Principles

Customer-driven, Reducing our environmental impact

Asset / operations

Operations

Organisation type

Cross-industry