This Special Issue ‘Infrastructure resilience to the climate challenge’ brings together a series of papers that showcase what can, and should, be done as we move into the future. It provides a thought-provoking piece on what the membership of this prestigious institution could be doing to help promote the UN Sustainable Goals within our work and contribute to the industry led changes that are needed to ensure we halt the continued warming of our planet’s atmosphere. The seven topic papers included in this Proceedings Special Issue look to provide case studies that showcase how we can make the changes that are needed for the next and subsequent generations.
So, why do we need to make changes? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up over a decade ago by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to provide an objective source of scientific information on climate change, but we have been slow to act. Since 2013 the evidence has shown that climate change has occurred and continues to occur at an alarming rate.
It was only in 2019 that the UK MPs in Westminster approved a motion to declare an environment and climate emergency, although not legally binding, it was a pledge to work with other Countries to achieve a Net Zero emissions position by 2050. Interim levels have been set to ensure this is achieved for both the developed and developing countries as we all inhabit the same planet.
We know that across the world many counties have begun to declare climate emergencies and this Special Issue will cover may aspects that demonstrate that this phenomenon is very real, is happening now and will also highlight what will happen if we do not act before it is too late. The papers include examples of what can be done to alleviate the emissions released into our atmosphere and the impacts on our transport systems.
The concentration of greenhouse gasses in the earth’s atmosphere is directly linked to our activities and the average temperature of the earth has been rising steadily, and the mean global temperatures along with it since the time of the Industrial Revolution. The most abundant greenhouse gas, accounting for about two-thirds of all greenhouse gases, is carbon dioxide and is largely a product of burning fossil fuels.
This Special Issue brings together a series of papers that showcase what can and should be done as we move into the future, covering highways, drainage, railways, construction, waterways, power supplies on railways and finally a thought-provoking piece.
The first paper is on Integrated emergency management of ‘lifeline’ highway networks: lessons for interoperability (Deeming and Lamb, 2024) and looks at the lessons learned by the UK highways sector dealing with extreme weather emergencies and keeping the critical ‘lifeline’ infrastructure operating. It demonstrates the need to strengthen highway engineers’ ability to prepare for the worst rather than the average. It demonstrates that these infrastructure lifelines are fundamental to services within the community and enable society to function.
The second paper Combining small-scale sustainable drainage systems with real-time control systems (Casares et al., 2024) looks at blue-green infrastructure and investigates the advantages and challenges of using small-scale modular sustainable drainage systems as real-time control systems for flood mitigation measures in public urban areas. By using case studies this paper provides evidence of how smart surface water management systems in urban areas can lead to more sustainable and resilient communities.
The third paper provides a review of the Climate change resilience beyond the mainline railway (Fisher et al., 2024) and looks at how the UK’s national railway network evaluated climate change impacts, risks and adaptative solutions. This review highlights the vulnerability of rail transport beyond the mainline network. Importantly it outlines the next steps to achieve resilience by providing an overview of advances, challenges and opportunities that face the rail sector. It captures the need to improve the knowledge of risks, the application of adaptation frameworks and the role of policy in their formulation.
The fourth paper Proposed guidance for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Middle Eastern construction (Mahmoud et al., 2024) takes us to the Middle East and shows how steps toward sustainable development have been applied here. The paper provides guidance for a comprehensive framework for reducing emissions from the construction industry, integrating carbon dioxide management processes at all stages of a project’s life cycle. The paper hopes to inspire carbon dioxide management ethos into Middle Eastern construction practice.
The fifth paper Port and inland waterway design and operation in the face of climate change uncertainty (Brooke et al., 2024) highlights the risk to ports and inland waterways of climate change. Historical information and future climates need to be considered, but the challenge is the availability of data and levels of uncertainty in it, leading to the need for a scenario-based approach as described in this paper together with an understanding of its limitations.
The sixth paper is a case study Weather-related fragility modelling of critical infrastructure: A power and railway case study (Jia et al., 2024). The paper presents a methodology to examine how the same weather events affect different infrastructure sectors to understand cross-sectoral impact of extreme weather for interconnected regional infrastructure - fragility modelling. The paper looks at the impact of temperature and rainfall on power and rail system failures using the West Midlands as a case study and provides an approach to assess the regional impact of extreme weather across multiple infrastructure sectors.
The final paper Infrastructure Resilience under a Changing Climate; the urgent need for engineers to act (Dora and Ferranti, 2024) outlines the challenges and progress in adapting to climate change, and the tools available for engineers. It discusses how ICE and our fellow engineering institutions must promote climate awareness and build capacity within their membership. The paper shows that there has never been a more exciting time to be an engineer, and the ICE and other professional institutions have a role to ensure that the sector is cognisant of all aspects of climate change so that engineers can use their ingenuity to develop solutions to tackle the climate crisis.
I hope you enjoy the articles as much as we did. It is important that we listen, learn and then act as we only have one planet Earth and we need to take care of it as we humans have been the main cause of climate change we now need to pull together to provide the solutions.
