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Adapting rail and road networks to weather extremes: case studies for southern Germany and Austria

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Abstract

The assessment of the current impacts of extreme weather conditions on transport systems reveals high costs in specific locations. Prominent examples for Europe are the economic consequences of the harsh winter periods 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 and the floods in Austria, Eastern Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom in 2005 and 2007. Departing from the EC-funded project WEATHER, this paper delves into the subject of adaptation strategies by revisiting the project’s general findings on adaptation strategies and by adding two specific cases: (1) advanced winter maintenance on roads in southwest Germany and (2) technical and organizational measures in Alpine rail transport. For these two cases, feasible adaptation strategies are elaborated and their potential is discussed in light of damage cost forecasts up to 2050. For the road sector, we find a high potential to mitigate weather-related costs, although damages here are expected to decline. In contrast, rail systems face strongly increasing damages and the mitigation options offered by improved information and communication systems seem to be largely exploited. Consequently, it is easier to justify expensive adaptation measures for high-cost rail infrastructures than for road transport. A generic analysis of 14 damage cases worldwide, however, revealed that generally awareness raising, cooperation and communication strategies are sufficient to mitigate the most severe damages by natural disasters.

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Acknowledgments

We were invited to submit this paper by Dr. Silas Michaelides, Director of Cyprus Meteorological Service. We thank Silas for organizing the special issue of the NHESS journal and for his patience with the several delays in finalizing the paper. We also thank all project partners of the WEATHER research team, as this paper relies heavily on the work carried out by all the team. Finally, our thank goes to the reviewers, who helped to improve this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Breslauer Str. 48, 76139, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Claus Doll

  2. Fraunhofer-Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology UMSICHT, Oberhausen, Germany

    Christian Trinks

  3. Institute for Industrial Production IIP, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Frank Schultmann

  4. University of Agder, Agder, Norway

    Tina Comes

  5. HERRY Consult GmbH, Vienna, Austria

    Norbert Sedlacek & Verena Pelikan

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  1. Claus Doll
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  4. Verena Pelikan
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  5. Tina Comes
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  6. Frank Schultmann
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Correspondence to Claus Doll.

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Doll, C., Trinks, C., Sedlacek, N. et al. Adapting rail and road networks to weather extremes: case studies for southern Germany and Austria. Nat Hazards 72, 63–85 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0969-3

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