Safety and Sustainability First: the Roadmap to Climate Resilience - SAR-CLIMATE

Safety and Sustainability First: the Roadmap to Climate Resilience

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Mr. Anish Joshi is GIS and Risk Assessment Specialist at Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC). He recently delivered an engaging presentation on promoting climate-resilient road transport infrastructure in South Asia. Watch the full presentation below.

What is the cost of climate change to South Asia’s transport sector?

The impacts are quite profound. Heavy rain in Nepal caused over US $25 million in road and bridge damages in 2021, whereas flood damages to Bangladesh’s roads nearly tripled from US $72 million in 2019 to US $209 million in 2020. Both countries realize that it’s not only climate change causing these impacts, but also insufficient road planning and design that is making it worse.

The CARE for South Asia project is helping Bangladeshi and Nepalese road authorities recognize gaps and opportunities for climate-resilient road transport infrastructure and is developing strategic action plans. We’re also recommending updates for national road and bridge design standards, mainstreaming climate change adaptations, preparing technical notes on maintenance techniques, rehabilitation, and retrofitting and recommending innovative construction materials.

At the regional level, we are developing Regional Guidelines for Climate-Resilient Roads and Bridges.

What approaches are you taking to promote climate-resilient transport?

First of all, we’ve developed a hazard, vulnerability, risk and criticality assessment (HVRCA) framework for road transport infrastructure based on the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report and road network asset management framework.

It helps identify the types and impacts of climate extremes and hazards experienced in the two countries, levels of exposure, what factors are driving road network vulnerabilities, potential damage and loss, and which roads are most critical for socio-economic development and network functionality.

The road development phase is critical and finance-intensive, so we also support authorities in integrating climate considerations and the HVRCA framework in all steps. We usually look at where the routes are to be planned, what climate-related hazards are these areas exposed to, and if Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can be integrated into its infrastructure among other things.

We have developed very high-resolution downscaled climate change models for past climate scenarios and future projections. Standard geospatial data helps to identify exposed and vulnerable road networks in Bangladesh and Nepal, analyze observed impacts, and anticipate future impacts and risks.

For example, we noticed a decrease in annual precipitation rates in Western Nepal and an increase in other parts of the country. Rainfall is one of the triggering factors of landslides, especially in hilly areas and communities, and we’ve been able to identify and map landslide-susceptible locations toto consider for existing road maintenance and future road developments.

What types of climate-induced impacts are you seeing in the region?

There are two angles mainly; observed impacts from climate extremes and observed impacts from climate-induced hazards.

Climate-induced hazards like landslides are fast and high-impact, but slow climate stressors like increasing or decreasing temperatures and variations in precipitation are just as damaging to South Asia’s roads.

Observed impacts we’ve seen from climate extremes include pavement degradation, potholes, and rutting due to extreme precipitation and surface runoff. Water is a major factor that affects road surface and sub-surface. On the other hand, climate-induced hazards like floods and landslides have sometimes caused blockage in major roads, damaged road assets, and affected traffic.

Apart from major roads, local, municipal, and connecting roads have also been impacted by different kinds of hazards. In Nepal, we are using a comprehensive geospatial information system (GIS) database from our focal agencies to understand how landslides affect the entire road network. We look at a specific segment of a linking road to determine its overall level of exposure and have found that where landslide susceptibility is higher, it will have a higher impact on the overall road networks.

A road is critical based on its system and/or functional performance. If a landslide blocks a road, then authorities should determine how critical the road is, whether there are alternate routes available for the mobility of population and freight, how its blockage will affect traffic and emergency performance, and possible socio-economic impacts.

There are two angles mainly; observed impacts from climate extremes and observed impacts from climate-induced hazards.

What future activities do you have planned?

Institutionalization and sustainability are very important factors in our work. We plan to integrate the HVRCA framework into national strategies for climate-resilient infrastructure that we are developing along with road agencies and also integrate the framework into all phases of road transport infrastructure development.

We will also be conducting national training events and workshops, beginning with an online virtual platform along with ADPC Academy focusing on hazards and criticality assessments, as well as promoting networking and partnerships with academia to embed this method into engineering courses especially related to the transport sector and road design.

Anish_ProfilePhoto (1)

The writer is GIS and Risk Assessment Specialist, ADPC and can be contacted at: anish.joshi@adpc.net

About Post Author

zandre

zandre.vanstraten@adpc.net

http://www.adpc.net

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