Life cycle cost assessment of railways infrastructure asset under climate change impacts

Abstract

Climate change impacts such as extreme temperatures, snow and ice, flooding, and sea level rise posed significant threats to railway infrastructure networks. One of the important questions that infrastructure managers need to answer is, “How will maintenance costs be affected due to climate change in different climate change scenarios?” This paper proposes an approach to estimate the implication of climate change on the life cycle cost (LCC) of railways infrastructure assets. The proportional hazard model is employed to capture the dynamic effects of climate change on reliability parameters and LCC of railway assets. A use-case from a railway in North Sweden is analyzed to validate the proposed process using data collected over 18 years. The results have shown that precipitation, temperature, and humidity are significant weather factors in selected use-case. Furthermore, our analyses show that LCC under future climate scenarios will be about 11 % higher than LCC without climate impacts.