Overview
The road sector is very vulnerable to extreme weather phenomena which can produce some of the largest and most expensive economic consequences. For this reason it is essential to know as early as possible to what extent the global change of climate has an impact on the national and European road network. With the help of climate projections specific impact models are applied to estimate the relevant parameters for road maintenance.
In recent years, it has been recognised that it is essential to assess the uncertainty and reliability of given climate projections by using ensemble approaches and downscaling methods. A huge amount of scientific work has been done to evaluate these approaches with regard to reliability and usefulness for investigations on possible impacts of climate changes.
Within this project we want to collect the existing approaches and methodologies, discuss the differences and – in close cooperation with the road owners - try to get a common line on future applications, wherever possible. This is to be done together with a second consortium consisting of the KNMI, Deltares, the SGI and egis. The details of this cooperation are to be settled at an initial project-meeting, arranged at an appropriate date after the kick-off meeting of the DWD-ZAMGconsortium.
The project will focus on the review, analysis and assessment of existing regional Climate Change projections regarding transnational highway networks (TEN-T) needs. A provision of data is not foreseen within the frame of this project. Because of the given short time line emphasis is given to the results from a number of already ongoing projects to contribute to a paper of recommendations for the involved national road agencies.
Funding
Results
Concerning the CEDR DoRN 2012 Call "Road owners adapting to Climate Change" the Project CliPDaR ("Design guideline for a transnational database of downscaled climate projection data for road impact models" (long title)) refers exclusively to the objective "A.1 - Review, analysis and assessment of existing (regional) Climate Change projections regarding transnational highway networks (TEN-T) needs". Regarding the questions of this objective the project CliPDaR is engaged in
- Assessment of statistical/dynamical downscaling: to facilitate a proper procedure that deals with the uncertainties of the future climate with respect to the needs of future budgets and maintenance issues
- Assessment of ensemble simulations and climate projections as well as the definition of a pragmatic data provision for decision making
- Assessment of future cold winters and hot summers in Europe
For full details see the final report in Documents.