EWENT Extreme weather impacts on European networks of transport Consequences of extreme weather

Abstract

This document is the third step in the EWENT approach to analyse and mitigate the influence of extreme weather on the European transport network. The two previous documents deal with the weather phenomena, which have influence on the different traffic modes (road, rail, aviation, in-land waterways and maritime shipping), and with future weather scenarios, which impact these phenomena. In this document a quantitative approach to analyse the different traffic means is developed, which is used in the subsequent work packages to carry out cost analysis and develop risk mitigation strategies. The approach is two-stepped. First the impact of extreme weather phenomena on the abovemen-tioned modes of transport is analysed. Example corridors or hot spots are identified for each traffic mean in each of the five identified climate areas (Nordic, Temperate, Alpine, Mediterranean and Maritime) and quantitatively assessed. Then following, the cost inducing effects of the weather phenomena are discussed. Both steps are evaluated separately for each transport mode because their sensitivity and resili-ence differ significantly from each other. Finally, the expected impact changes are shown in a comprehensive summary table. The analysis shows that especially road traffic with its two traffic patterns, freight transport be-tween major knots on corridors and passenger flows in large cities that are affected by delay. Also aviation that has high weather dependence already today, will suffer from extreme weather events in the future. The reason for this is two-folded. On one hand, wind gusts will increase, especially in the southern part of Europe and on the other hand, free capacity, which is currently used to buffer weather events, will be occupied by additional flights. Hence the impact of weather will be even higher than today. For the other traffic modes no significant change in delay behavior due to ex-treme weather is expected in the long-term future, but already at present the delays do exist to the extent that requires attention. For all transport modes the accident rates should have a declining trend or stay on a low level in the future as it is expected that better technique and higher safety standards, which today are best adopted in aviation, will influence the accident rate more than the expected weather changes.