Tomorrow's Railway and Climate Change Adaptation Final Report

2 Scope
The T1009 programme of research focuses on the entire railway industry. It investigates
the vulnerability of the sub-systems and their interdependencies within the whole
railway system. It considers the dependencies between rail and other transport modes,
and sectors such as energy and information communications technology.
The research programme has taken account of:
• Current and future weather and climate resilience of the GB mainline railway
network
• Time horizons out to 2100, reflecting control period reporting, railway strategy
timeframes, uncertainties in climate projections, and calls by government and
others for a longer term focus to the end of the century
• Decadal steps as appropriate for different asset/ operational life cycles
• Data and information from rail industry partners including Network Rail and RSSB,
the most up-to-date information available on future climate projections for the
UK, and relevant findings from UK-based research projects such as FUTURENET
and ITRC (Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium)
• Co-ordination with a wide research base, such as that funded by the research
councils. Examples include EPSRC-funded Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing
Climate (ARCC) Co-ordination Network projects
• ‘Lessons learnt’ from overseas studies and railway operators, and from other
domestic railway operators
• Challenges from the perspective of systemic risks, opportunities and systemically
resilient design.
Phase 2 has used the findings from Phase 1 to inform the Phase 2 tasks.
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