Abstract
Severe accidents and high costs associated with weather-related events already occur in today’s climate. Unless preventive measures are taken, the costs are expected to increase in future due to ongoing climate change. However, the risk reduction measures are costly as well and may result in unwanted impacts. Therefore, it is important to identify, assess and prioritize which measures are necessary to undertake, as well as where and when these are to be undertaken. To be able to make such evaluations, robust (scientifically based), transparent and systematic assessments and valuations are required. This article describes a framework to assess the cause-and-effect relationships and how to estimate the costs and benefits as a basis to assess and prioritize measures for climate adaptation of roads and railways. The framework includes hazard identification, risk analysis and risk assessment, identification, monetary and non-monetary evaluation of possible risk reduction measures and a step regarding distribution-, goal- and sensitivity analyses. The results from applying the framework shall be used to prioritize among potential risk reduction measures as well as when to undertake them.
Highlights
Roads and railways are sensitive to climate-related events such as intense rainfall and flooding causing landslides, damaged bridge foundations, overloaded track drainage, flooded tracks and derailment risks, already resulting in high costs [1,2,3,4]
While solar curves can be disastrous for the railways, heat waves might cause changes in the interior of the road causing migration of liquid asphalt or bleeding, and ravelling on the road surface [7,8]
The major steps and questions to be answered through the process are based on classic risk management [32] and a method developed at Swedish Transport Administration (STA) for impact evaluation [31,42,43]
Summary
Roads and railways are sensitive to climate-related events such as intense rainfall and flooding causing landslides, damaged bridge foundations, overloaded track drainage, flooded tracks and derailment risks, already resulting in high costs [1,2,3,4]. While solar curves can be disastrous for the railways, heat waves might cause changes in the interior of the road causing migration of liquid asphalt or bleeding, and ravelling (loss of stones) on the road surface [7,8]. Changes in water content, repeated freezing and thawing, moisture content and more severe cloudbursts, high winds, and increased subsurface water will result in increased progressive shear failure, excessive plastic deformation, attrition with mud pumping, frost action, swelling and shrinkage, washout, and slope erosion [5,9]. In cold climate regions, an increase in temperature might cause an increase in freeze and thaw cycles, causing more damage to the roads
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