As world leaders meet this week at COP 29, they are focusing on securing a new goal on climate finance, ensuring every country has the means to take much stronger climate action, slashing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilient communities. CIHT’s latest report ‘Delivering a resilient transport network’ outlines how the highways sector must change and begin to implement specific interventions to mitigate the impact of climate change.

The report contains an overview of the impacts of extreme weather on road infrastructure and uses case studies to show how implementing ad hoc adaptation pathways and physical interventions can have genuine success. It also highlights that the highways and transport sector needs serious prioritisation in this period of climate emergency.

COP 29 will see attendees discuss how to help communities adapt to the impact of climate change with a focus on how to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Our latest report shows how preparing road infrastructure now is key to long-term resilience, saving costs, and protecting communities and the economy.

Key takeaways from the report 

1. Urgency to act now and be prepared: CIHT calls for adaptation and resilience to be made an immediate investment and policy priority across all governmental transport strategies. There is a risk of significant and expensive infrastructure failures if resilience measures are not recognised as key strategic objectives now. Extreme weather events are happening with increased frequency and intensity – it is imperative that we act now to mitigate the risk of possible losses.
2. Funding for maintenance: CIHT calls for investment in maintenance of our existing highways and infrastructure to ensure the continued and efficient use of our transport network. Incrementally adapting infrastructure and proactively maintaining it are crucial for extreme weather resilience and meeting decarbonisation goals.
3. Mandatory assessments of the current and future resilience of infrastructure: CIHT encourages the legislative road authorities of the UK to make it a statutory requirement for all transport asset owners to carry out transport resilience assessments. This will help to identify vulnerabilities in the network, prioritise remedial action and identify who should be responsible. This should also apply to neighbouring asset owners and utilities where risks and impacts are clearly inter-twined.
4. Building a nationwide leadership: CIHT encourages the legislative road authorities of the UK to provide coherent and consistent guidance to the sector on how to undertake risk assessments on resilience. There is a need to avoid different operators and asset owners developing their own internal assessments based on different assumptions, leading to non-transferable or non-sharable data. 

To access a full copy of the report, please visit https://www.ciht.org.uk/resilience