Tomorrow's Railway and Climate Change Adaptation Final Report

potential T1009 decision support tool. We suggest that further work should
quantitatively investigate:
• The interactions between the railway system and other external systems in which
flows in the system are complex and not managed by a single organisation (e.g. road
transport)
• How gradual changes in external systems would affect the railway in the long term. It
is also suggested that the railway and other infrastructure operators, such as utility
providers, should have data sharing agreements. This would help the railway industry
understand how external systems, such as the National Grid, would be affected by
climate change and how it would impact the railway.
The Task 4F and 5F case study has applied the approaches derived in Tasks 4 and 5.
Based on this, it is recommended that the areas needing longer-term knowledge
building include:
• Quantified information and evidence of interactions and/ or flows between systems,
especially for roads, ports, etc., which do not own flows on them
• How long-term gradual degradation or condition change (e.g. water leakage) would
affect the railway system (and vice versa).
These interactions would vary depending on the geographical area, so local level
investigations would be required.
5.21 Task 5A Geographic systems modelling, review of
GIS based risk and vulnerability identification and
assessment tools that are available and in use
Task 5A reviews the geographical information system-based (GIS-based) risk and
vulnerability identification and assessment tools that are available and used by Network
Rail and other industries to assess the impact of climate change on infrastructure assets.
The recommendations presented here are the top three ranked recommendations from
Task 5A, based on the characterisation derived in Task 7A.
It is recommended that that Network Rail adopts a GIS approach to link real time rail
temperature data to the Critical Rail Temperature Register, using forecasted
temperatures to provide alerts and warnings. This action will improve predictions of
potential rail buckling or cracking, enabling investigation and/ or remedial measures to
be carried out.
It is recommended that that a GIS approach is used to record third-party asset data
where such data may affect Network Rail’s assets.
The authors also recommend that Network Rail considers how to liaise with other asset
owners at local and strategic levels. These actions will provide a better understanding of
how Network Rail assets affect or can be impacted on by third-party assets. This
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