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UNECE workshop seeks to enhance resilience of railway transport systems to climate change

UNECE workshop seeks to enhance resilience of railway transport systems to climate change

Flooded railway

Our climate is changing. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, causing damage and disruption to railway infrastructure and operations. Railway and transport sector professionals must understand how extreme weather impacts their assets and operations, and how they can adapt to a changing climate.

To enhance such understanding, UNECE in collaboration with Turkish Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and the Turkish Railways (TCDD) recently held a workshop in Istanbul, under the umbrella of the Coordination Committee for Trans-Caspian and Almaty-Teheran-Istanbul Corridors on developing adaptation pathways for transport resilience.

Adaptation pathways provide a flexible framework to plan adaptation action for unknown socio-economic and climate futures, collating multiple adaptation options for different risk scenarios and incorporating other factors, such as biodiversity or development targets.

Workshop participants came from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan, representing both railway organizations and government ministries, as well as a range of professions including civil engineering, electrical engineering, materials and metallurgy, meteorological engineering, and sustainability. They considered various information on climate change, climate projections, climate hazards, and adaptation actions based on examples from across the world. The also participated in groupwork to brainstorm adaptation actions for different climate scenarios and different hazards to railways, reflecting on interdependencies between railway system with other systems.

Participants worked together to develop adaptation pathways and considered wider aspects of climate resilience, including addressing the biodiversity crisis and reducing carbon emissions in particular by applying nature-based adaptation solutions. A particular attention was drawn to understanding decision trigger points, namely the point at which a decision for changing adaptation actions must be taken to maintain an acceptable level of risk.

Participants were able to learn about best approaches to managing the impact of weather and longer-term climate change on railway infrastructure and operations. This type of sharing and collaboration is key to addressing the challenge of climate adaptation.

For more information on adaptation pathways, please refer to a framework for developing adaptation pathways for transport professionals elaborated by the UNECE Group of Experts on Assessment of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation for Inland Transport: https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/ECE-TRANS-WP5-GE3-2023-02r1e.pdf