By Sara Zuin, in conversation with Craig Thomas

We are currently seeing more frequent and more extreme weather events, such as storms, accompanied by predictions that suggest our weather is about to change dramatically.

For example, by 2070, winter rainfall in the UK is expected to have increased by 25%, so we need to plan and have an emergency strategy in place, so that when extreme weather events happen, we’re able to react in the best way. 

Planning for such natural disasters is cyclical. You anticipate, scanning the horizon for potential emergency and extreme weather events. You then assess the risks of your infrastructure, looking at your highways and trying to identify areas that might be more at risk of disruption. You set priorities, then you prevent, looking at the current status of your assets and doing the necessary maintenance. 

Conducting regular inspections can identify vulnerabilities and enable you to address them in a timely manner, so you can ensure a continuity of a service during an extreme weather event. The required maintenance can involve retrofitting measures for older infrastructure, using new materials that can withstand more severe weather conditions.

Implementing the plan most important

You implement your plan before you adapt to the circumstances, because you not only have to take into account the moment that the storm [hits], but also the following days, or even weeks. How do you immediately respond to a community left without any form of transportation? How do you make sure that a week after the event we are able to move people and goods around and how do we learn from all of this experience? 

After responding, you stabilise, trying to regain a form of control, resolving how to redirect traffic if a specific road in a key network isn’t usable, or ensuring that people can still move around, all while managing the impacts on the possible new road that is being used. 

Extreme weather is here to stay

Highways managers and local authorities should also move away from seeing extreme weather events as a one-off, because it’s clear that they constitute a new normal, unfortunately. The need to develop our infrastructure services and make sure that our communities can still function is real – which is why when planning for extreme weather events, you try to also bring everybody to the table, including third parties and corporate partners.

There is a definite increase in awareness, especially at the local level and in those authorities that have experience of dealing with such situations. However, it’s fair to say that the increased frequency has happened so quickly that some local authorities that had never previously been exposed to extreme weather are now having to think about planning for them.

They can learn from some great work from many local authorities, especially in Scotland, who have encountered the effects of extreme weather. In particular, there are the lessons we’ve learned from the experience of [Storm Desmond in] Cumbria for example, with a 2015 event that is now a great case study that other local authorities should study.

CIHT will shortly be releasing our transport manifesto for any future UK governments and a need to focus on resilience will be one of the main themes.

Image: Sara Zuin, CIHT Policy Advisor — Transport Infrastructure