A Method to identify potential Climate Change Impacts on Infrastructural Assets and Further Steps for Adaptability

Abstract

Climate change is likely to affect our infrastructures in the Netherlands and seems to accelerate: sooner, faster, stronger. This stresses the need for adaptable infrastructure. Asset owners cannot assume a certain final situation of the infrastructure and the impacts on it due to climate change. This report answers the following research question: How can existing infrastructural asset designs in the Netherlands be adapted to anticipated current and future expected climate change effects? A method is developed to explore what the effects of climate change are on infrastructure and what further steps can be taken to make the infrastructure adaptable. The Afsluitdijk is used as a case study and has five embedded sub-assets: the dam, motorway, outlet sluices, ship locks and bridges. Nine climate change effects are distinguished for the Netherlands in the scenario WH of the KNMI in 2085. The climate change effects are combined with the asset parts and all combinations are assessed separately. An expert reflects on the combination of climate change impacts and asset part and elaborates on how the climate change effect impacts the reliability, safety or maintenance of the asset. This resulted in 21 identified possible problems for the 2020 design of the Afsluitdijk. In this report is looked at foreign situations that are comparable to the Afsluitdijk’s circumstances. Some of the 21 identified problems can easily be solved. A structured approach on how to assess the impact of climate change on infrastructure is lacking so far. The method makes sure all aspects are considered and helps the expert to think of all theoretical problems that have not occurred yet but are in the future a possible problem. Assets that are an integral system are preferred. The Afsluitdijk is interconnected to its environment and hard boundaries are difficult to determine. This makes the Afsluitdijk not an ideal case study, but this interconnectedness is typical for large scale infrastructural projects and those projects are often most interesting. Rijkswaterstaat recognizes the surplus of water problems in the new design. However, drought, heat waves and a low water level are three climate impacts that are not taken into consideration in the new design of 2020. Summer related problems are explored by Rijkswaterstaat but have not yet received the attention it deserves. Rijkswaterstaat is unprepared to a situation where climate change effects are more severe than was estimated in their assumptions. On top of that, Rijkswaterstaat is inclined to address problems of big infrastructural problems by cutting them of in smaller projects and try to solve them. However, in large projects it is better to have an integral solution since all aspects are interconnected and influence one another. The method provides this integral viewpoint and allows the user to make long-term decisions while taking the uncertainties of climate change into account. By using the method, choices in design and management of the infrastructural asset can be made with confidence. This does not guarantee that the outcome of a risky decision will be optimal. But the decision will be rational in the face of uncertainty and that the repeated application of the method will on the long run be more beneficial.