Climate change and road freight safety: impacts and opportunities

This thesis aims to apply recent conceptual frameworks for climate change impact assessment to the road freight sector of Great Britain in order to identify potential future safety issues. The freight sector is a key component of Great Britain’s economy, and one which is particularly vulnerable to the effects of adverse weather. An assessment of the current patterns in weather related freight accidents is produced, and existing studies on accident causation are elaborated upon to arrive at relationships between key meteorological parameters and freight accident rates. These relationships are extrapolated onto various climate scenarios under low, medium and high emissions for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s using UKICP09 climate tools to arrive at projections of possible impacts at a regional scale. This thesis also addresses a key criticism of the previous climate change impact assessment literature; that studies usually neglect the consideration of what the network will look like in the future, how it will be used, and how this will impact upon its vulnerability to meteorology. The way in which the network is designed, the resilience of the vehicles that operate on it and the split of usage between the various modes will all affect the impacts that are likely to be seen, and are all determined by the broader socio-economic pathway of the country. Delphi techniques are used for short term forecasts of growth and to identify emerging issues with the industry. UKCIP data is used to extend these projections to 2050. By combining social and physical techniques, a more holistic picture of future impacts is found. Although the confluence of safer technology and a reduction of winter road icing and summer precipitation events could potentially lead to a safer operating environment, certain scenarios which promote high emissions, a larger freight fleet and low investment in infrastructure could cause problems, especially for winter precipitation events

Operational readiness for climate change of Malaysia high-speed rail

The Paris Agreement of December 2015 signifies global unity to limit global warming to well below 2°C (above pre-industrial levels) and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1·5°C. The global community now agrees that anthropogenic climate change is unequivocal. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global average combined land and surface temperature has increased by 0·78°C. Although the magnitude of change in mean temperatures is relatively small, attendant extreme weather events have been shown to have increased in frequency, and are projected to increase in the future. The potential impacts of climate change on railway infrastructure and operations have not been fully assessed in the literature. The projected urban growth in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore has led to the necessity to establish a high-speed rail (HSR) system between the two. However, the existing railway network in the region has been significantly affected by severe weather conditions such as rainfall, lightning, wind and very high temperatures. This research addresses a knowledge gap regarding the potential impacts of climate change on future rail projects in the region, and points out the vulnerabilities that may lead to impaired operations and system failures. These insights are intended to inform the holistic consideration of climate change impacts in the design stage of HSR systems in Malaysia and beyond. </jats:p

Risks of Climate Change with respect to the Singapore-Malaysia High Speed Rail System

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and many of the observed changes are unprecedented over the past five decades. Globally, the atmosphere and the ocean are becoming increasingly warmer, the amount of ice on the earth is decreasing over the oceans, and the sea level has risen. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the average increase in global temperature (combined land and surface) between the 1850–1900 period and the 2003–2012 period was 0.78 °C (0.72 to 0.85). But should we prepare for such a relatively small change? The importance is not the means of the warming but the considerable likelihood of climate change that could trigger extreme natural hazards. The impact and the risk of climate change associated with railway infrastructure have not been fully addressed in the literature due to the differences in local environmental parameters. On the other hand, the current railway network in Malaysia, over the last decade, has been significantly affected by severe weather conditions such as rainfall, lightning, wind and very high temperatures. Our research findings based on a critical literature review and expert interviews point out the extremes that can lead to asset system failure, degraded operation and ultimately, delays in train services. During flooding, the embankment of the track can be swept away and bridge can be demolished, while during drought, the embankment of the track can suffer from soil desiccation and embankment deterioration; high temperature increases the risk of track buckling and high winds can result in vegetation or foreign object incursion onto the infrastructure as well as exert an additional quasi-static burden. This review is of significant importance for planning and design of the newly proposed high speed rail link between Malaysia and Singapore

Sea-level rise impacts on transport infrastructure: the notorious case of the coastal railway line at Dawlish, England

Future climate change is likely to increase the frequency of coastal storms and floods, with major consequences for coastal transport infrastructure. This paper assesses the extent to which projected sea-level rise is likely to impact upon the functioning of the Dawlish to Teignmouth stretch of the London to Penzance railway line, in England. Using a semi-empirical modelling approach, we identify a relationship between sea-level change and rail incidents over the last 150 years and then use model-based sea-level predictions to extrapolate this relationship into the future. We find that days with line restrictions (DLRs) look set to increase by up to 1170%, to as many as 84–120 per year, by 2100 in a high sea-level rise scenario (0.55–0.81 m). Increased costs to the railway industry deriving from maintenance and line restrictions will be small (£ millions) in comparison with damage caused by individual extreme events (£10s of millions), while the costs of diversion of the railway are higher still (£100s of millions to billions). Socio-economic costs to the region are likely to be significant although they are more difficult to estimate accurately. Finally, we explain how our methodology is applicable to vulnerable coastal transport infrastructure worldwide

Addressing the climate challenge

In 2021, colleagues from across the University of Birmingham community were invited to write articles about topics relevant to the COP26 climate change summit. In this series of articles, experts from across many different disciplines provide new insight and evidence on how we might all understand and tackle climate change