Adapting railways to provide resilience and sustainability

Abstract

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.