Tomorrow's Railway and Climate Change Adaptation Final Report

5.8.6 Data gathering
The specific weather and other circumstances leading to erosion of performance did not
appear to us to be universally recorded by Network Rail. A requirement to record these
would lead to a better understanding of how the assets perform, and therefore better
decision making on how performance might be improved.
5.9 Task 1E Economics of climate change adaptation,
Western Route case study
The following recommendations are made based on the case study work:
Dealing with uncertainty
• Combine hydrological models with an approach that can establish which assets will be
vulnerable to flood hazard, and can estimate the likely extent of the damage
• Update the underlying assumptions on hazard, vulnerability and risk to service by
formation of a risk chain, with a vulnerability metric such as journey availability.
Monitor the impacts of the assets on the vulnerability metric.
Extending the boundary of the analysis
• Use a full cost-benefit analysis that extends the nature of impacts addressed where
there is an anticipated high societal impact. Consider using a multi-modal model (and
a system of systems approach, including the impact on freight) for significant
resilience investments. It is also important to address problems and solutions over a
wide geographical area. Such appraisals, if carried out quickly, could feed into the
current work on Network Rail’s CP6 investment plan
Applying different measures
• Keep better records from previous events including damage to rail assets, and the
parameters of the weather and the associated weather event that has caused that
damage. Start clearly defining asset groups (track, power, communications,
structures, staff, rolling stock and others) in terms of their spatial extent (in three
dimensions) and connectivity, as well as vulnerability to specific hazards. This could be
done based on the T1009 Phase 1 information (Task 1B).
5.10 Task 2A Overseas weather and railways, temporal
and spatial characteristics of future climate, and Task
2B Overseas weather and railways, identification of
similar climates
Task 2A and Task 2B recommend that the following nine countries be considered as
potential overseas analogies for the UK rail system. In Europe: Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, and outside Europe, Morocco
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