Periodic Report Summary 2 - WEATHER (Weather extremes: assessment of impacts on transport systems and hazards for European regions) Project context and objectives: In its work programme 2008 the European Commission (EC), directorate-general (DG) 'Research and innovation', has issued task TPT.2008.1 on the impacts of extreme weather conditions on transport systems. Coordinated by the Fraunhofer-Institute for Systems and innovation research (ISI), an interdisciplinary team of eight European institutions from six countries was formed to carry out the project WEATHER (weather extremes, assessment of impacts on transport systems and hazards for European regions). Project partners: Fraunhofer-Institute for ISI, Karlsruhe (DE) project coordinator Fraunhofer-Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (IVI), Dresden (DE) Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Hellenic Institute for Transport (HIT), Thessaloniki (GR) Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et de Sciences Humaines - International research Centre on Environment and Development (SMASH-CIRED), Paris (FR) Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe (DE) Institute of Studies for the Integration of Systems (ISIS), Rome (IT) HERRY Consult GmbH, Vienna (AT) Agenzia Regionale Prevenzione e Ambiente dell'Emilia Romagna (ARPA-ER), Servizio Idro-Meteo-Clima (SIMC), Bologna (IT) Panteia-NEA Transport Research and Training, Zoetermeer (NL). The WEATHER project approaches the topic of extreme events and their impacts on transport systems from an economic perspective. Its core objective is to 'determine the physical impacts and the economic costs of climate change on transport systems and identify the costs and benefits of suitable adaptation and emergency management strategies'. This general objective is detailed by 7 sub-goals: 1. develop a dynamic model on the causal relations between the severity and frequency of extreme events, the functionality of critical sectors and social welfare; 2. detailed assessment of the vulnerable elements and damage costs in transport systems; 3. work out efficient and innovative mechanisms of managing disastrous events, focusing on maintaining the function of transport systems; 4. identify appropriate and efficient-adaptation strategies for transportation infra-structures and services to ease the impacts of extreme events in the future; 5. clarify the role of governments, companies and industry associations; 6. check the applicability of theoretical concepts of vulnerability assessment, crises prevention and adaptation strategies with practical experiences and local conditions; 7. dissemination of project findings to a wider audience to fostering the debate on the costs and implications of more frequent and severe weather conditions on transport systems. The project started in November 2009 and lasted for 30 months until April 2012. The project work plan is broken down in two Work package (WP)s for management dissemination and seven WPs on research: - WP1: Weather trends and economy-wide impacts - WP2: Vulnerability of transport systems - WP3: Crisis management and emergency strategies - WP4: Adaptation options and strategies - WP5: Governance, incentives and innovation - WP6: Case studies - WP7: Policy conclusions and final conference Moreover, the project design includes three thematic workshops and a final conference to keep track of parallel developments in science and transportation, a series of case studies and an international panel of experts. The details of the project are described on the project website containing WP descriptions and current results (www.weather-project.eu). Project results: The activities in the reporting period concentrated on WP1 ('Climate scenarios and wider economic impacts'), WP4 ('Adaptation strategies'), WP5 ('Actors and governance'), WP6 ('Case studies') and WP7 ('Conclusions'). Three major project events have been organised: workshop 3 related to WP4 (May 2011 in Rotterdam), a joined workshop with the partner project EWENT and ECCONET (January 2012 in Washington D.C.) and the final conference (April 2012 in Athens) Additional case studies have been contributed by the WEATHER international panel. All tasks have been successfully performed and the related reports have been submitted to the EC and have been published on the project website. In Particular: WP1: Weather Trends and Wider Economic Impacts Based on the categorisation of Europe into eight different climate zones proposed in Deliverable 2 major databases and reports including EWENT D2.1 have been compiled to estimate future trends in extreme weather across Europe. The scenarios have been used to forecasts direct damage costs to the transport sector to 2050.l To capture local conditions a statistical downscaling method has been developed by ARPA-SIMC, in order to estimate future changes in temperature and precipitation over northern Italy (pilot area), at station level for the periods 2021-2050 and 2071-2099 with respect to 1961-1990. To capture economy-wide impacts of transport sector vulnerability to climate change the Adaptive regional input-output (ARIO) model has been extended, including disaster interruption profiles and frequencies with input from WP2. WP4: Adaptation strategies All together over 300 adaptation strategies have been identified and assessed with the help of literature reviews, expert interviews and the third project workshop held in Rotterdam, 20 May 2011. Work was broken down by adaptation sectors infrastructures, vehicles, operations and planning, and by relevant mode within each sector. While vehicles and operations considered all five major modes road, urban public transport, rail, aviation and shipping airports were omitted in infrastructures and planning concentrated on road and rail. WP5: Actors, governance and innovation Relevant actors in the different policy fields were identified according to different policy fields and were classified according to activity types and requirements. Basis of this task was an intensive literature review combined with stakeholder interviews. Governance and incentive issues were tackled by a comprehensive literature review investigating different adaptation strategies from a theoretical point of view. In addition, currently available adaptation policy frameworks were presented focusing on risk-based approaches. Eventually, innovation aspects have been addressed by analysing the market diffusion of policies on other sectors and by analysing international patent statistics based on WP4 classifications of adaptation technologies. WP6: Case studies The tasks are organised along the extreme weather events having significant impact to operation of specific transport modes and infrastructures. The case studies investigated damage levels, adaptation strategies implemented after the event, lessons learned from earlier disasters and the reliability of local adaptation policy. Six cases in various parts of Europe have been selected: - flood of 2002 in eastern Germany; - summer heat 2007 in southern Europe; - flooding of the rail link Vienna-Prague in 2006; - hurricane Xynthia in France in 2010; - heavy snow on Apenine roads (Northern Italy); - Rhine shipping during 2003 summer heat. WP7: Policy recommendations The WP has summarised the findings from the previous work in the project and has conducted the project final conference, 23 April in Athens. In addition the WP has produced a special report on the five contributions of the international panel members. The overall findings of the project and its events plus targeted recommendations to policy makers will be published as deliverable 7. Potential impact: This section deals with the results found by the WPs which were active in reporting period 2. Looking across the entire work performed by the WEATHER project we can state that the objectives of the project have been fully met. WP1: Weather trends, cost forecasts and wider impacts Due to its flexibility road transport shows only a cost increase in 5 % per pkm, while the increases are 20 % for aviation and 39 % for rail. Most risky zones are mountain areas and Scandinavia. On the local level climate change scenarios of seasonal minimum and maximum temperature estimate a possible increasing in both minimum and maximum temperature over northern Italy in all seasons. To our knowledge the assessment of annual economy wide losses from extreme weather events on transport established with the ARIO model is the only existing framework of its kind. The main finding is that the order of magnitude of economy wide losses due to extreme weather events is manageable even in most pessimistic what if scenario and that indirect losses may range around 40 % of direct losses. WP4: Adaptation strategies For all relevant modes of transport possible and promising adaptation measures were identified, assessed and stored into a searchable database. Instead of a full Cost benefit assessment (CBA) a Multi criteria analysis (MCA) was developed to prioritise measures. Workshop 3 suggests that key constraints for an appropriate investment strategy are that climate change is a multi-sectoral issue, which is not limited to transport infrastructure, and that a high level of investment funding is required, which is difficult to schedule. But the MCA concludes that cooperation, intelligent vehicle and sensor technologies show the highest benefit over costs ratio. WP5: Actors, governance and innovation It can be seen from the mapping of actors to policy areas that there is not a single actor per policy field and no actor is active on only a single policy area. Thus, coordination is needed for successful long-term adaptation implementation. In addition to established concepts in climate change adaptation, new concepts emerged in the recent past. In particular, no-regret, safety margins, and reversible strategies have been developed. The available policy instruments to increase the application of certain climate change adaptation strategies are in general regulations or incentives. A cross sector analysis identifies the combination of information, education and training, infrastructure and social planning plus organisation as a promising strategy. On the basis of international patent statistics we can conclude, that if European industries would like to remain a strong partner in supplying other world regions with resilient transport system components research levels need to be maintained. WP6: Case studies Recommendations to ensure a better preparedness for future extreme weather events and disaster response were elaborated from the perspective of the transport sector for different European regions with higher occurrence risks of weather extremes. In summary, the case studies highlight that efficient communications structures, coordination of the involved authorities, strict maintenance of protection systems, in-time information on upcoming disasters, and the development of contingency plans for people and logistics nods as well as timely, direct responses are fundamental for a successful emergency management. WP7: Policy recommendations The joint workshop in Washington DC found that, though uncertainties remain huge, the project cluster funded under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Research and technological development (RTD) of the EC substantially contributes to identifying the major hot spots. Further cooperation between European, north American and supranational organisations has been agreed. The final conference highlighted the importance of trans-national cooperations, no-regret solutions and pointed on the needs of developing countries List of websites: www.weather-project.eu Other report summaries Periodic Report Summary 1 - WEATHER (Weather extremes: assessment of impacts on transport systems and hazards for European regions)
