Climate change in asset management of infrastructure: A risk-based methodology applied to disruption of traffic on road networks due to the flooding of tunnels

Climate change in asset management of infrastructure: A risk-based methodology applied to disruption of traffic on road networks due to the flooding of tunnels

Huibregtse, E.
Napoles, O.M.
Hellebrandt, L.
Paprotny, D.
de Wit, S.

2016

This paper presents a risk-based method to quantify climate change effects on road infrastructure, as a support for decision-making on interventions. This can be implemented in climate adaptation plans as an element of asset management. The method is illustrated by a specific case in which traffic on a road network is disrupted by the flooding of a tunnel due to extreme rainfall. Novel techniques to describe both probability of occurrence and consequences of an event are integrated into the proposed risk-based approach. To model a typical climate-change related phenomenon, i.e. rainfall intensity-duration, a model using copulas is proposed as well as a method to account for uncertainty using structured expert judgement. To quantify the consequences, an existing quick scan tool is adopted. The method calculates the risk of flooding of a tunnel, expressed in both probability of occurrence and subsequent additional travel duration on the road network. By comparison of this evolving risk to a societally acceptable threshold, the remaining resilience of the tunnel is evaluated. Furthermore, the method assesses the development of the resilience over time as a result of projected climate change. The maximum time-to-intervention is defined as the period up until the moment when the resilience is depleted. By application of the method to a tunnel in two different contexts, i.e. in a regional road network and a highway network, it is shown that the consequences of tunnel flooding may differ by an order of magnitude (25-fold for the example). Using a risk-based decision-making perspective leads to significant differences in the maximum time-to-intervention. In the example case the year of intervention is determined at 2020 for a tunnel in a highway network, while interventions can be postponed until 2140 in a regional road network. © 2016, Editorial Board EJTIR. All rights reserved.

2015 Fluid & Solid Mechanics
SR - Structural Reliability
TS - Technical Sciences
Architecture and Building
Climate change
Infrastructure
Asset management
Risk-based design
Probabilistic modelling
Structured expert judgment

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:3574b3ca-3ad1-4c70-bf23-88b2f523f254

530914

Editorial Board EJTIR

1567-7141

European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, 16 (1), 98-113

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