Flooding of tunnels: quantifying climate change effects on infrastructure

Abstract

To develop climate proof road infrastructure it is of importance to understand the quantitative effects of expected climate change on the performance of individual components, such as tunnels and road sections, and their contributions to the performance of the overall road network.A full understanding of quantitative effects on infrastructure and the effect of measures is currently lacking. In this study, a method is developed to quantify the effects of climate change on infrastructure by performing a resilience analysis of individual objects. To illustrate this method the frequency of flooding due to (extreme) rainfall induced by climate change of a fictitious tunnel in The Netherlands, is studied as a test case. This structured method is a promising technique that might be a good basis for decision making processes. The analysis shows that several data is missing, both climatological data as well as quantified requirements on the performance of infrastructural components