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Extreme weather impacts on transport systems
Abstract and Figures
This report summarises the work done in 7 FP project EWENT, its first work package.
D1 deliverable introduces a review of extreme weather phenomena and identifies
their impacts and consequences on European transport system. All modes of transport
are covered. Two main methods are used. First, there is an extensive literature
review on extreme weather events and their impacts and consequences. Well over
150 scientific and professional references are studied and listed. This is followed by a
review of media reported cases, almost 200 of them. With the help of these two
methods and material they provide, critical threshold values for most relevant weather
phenomena that affect different transport modes are listed. The phenomena have
impacts and consequences which result in deterioration in the service level of transportation
system. A dozen different impact mechanisms are charted and annexed to
this report. Finally, brief summary of results is drawn, including a first-impressiondiscussion
on strategic implications. Precipitation in all its forms (water, snow, hail)
seems to dominate the harmful impacts. Road transport system seems to be the most
vulnerable of modes.
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... The BU will not monitor or control its substation or auxiliary services if the tele-control system is unreliable and the BU needs a reliable tele-control system to have a smooth train operation. Leviäkangas et al. (2011) caution that thunderstorm activities harm rail operations when lightning strikes switching equipment like tele-control. Adequate lightning protection reduces the chances of lightning strikes and regular lightning protection inspections also assist to minimize the chances of lightning strikes. ...
... The catenary wire has a structural function to suspend the contact wire by means of droppers and an electrical function to conduct traction and fault currents and the contact wire provides the electrical live interface with the locomotive for traction purpose. Leviäkangas et al. (2011) believe that overhead catenary wires may fare poorly when exposed to winter storms and snow and regular catenary wire inspections and season preparedness plans that railway companies put in place can help reduce the impact of winter storms and snows on the catenary wire. ...
... Theft and vandalism-related failures amount to millions and companies and departments are losing people and assets due to theft and vandalism-related failures. Leviäkangas et al. (2011) caution that extreme weather may cause impacts and consequences affecting these dimensions and lowering the rail transport services. Railway infrastructure weather-related impacts include avalanches, landslides, melting permafrost, and hot and cold waves. ...
... Climate change has a significant impact on railway infrastructure and operations, as railway elements are more sensitive to changes in extreme weather conditions such as heavy rain, windstorms, temperature changes, frost, fog, and lightning. In some regions, extreme cold has an impact on railway performance as the train can derail owing to ice accumulation on the track, equipment failure, and switches freezing, resulting in time delays and higher maintenance and repair costs [3]. In arid regions, heavy rains, strong winds, high temperatures, and lightning are the most harmful weather phenomena that affect the safety of railway infrastructure and increase repair and maintenance costs, resulting in financial losses. ...
... France [3] 1993 Mississippi River floods Flood damage to railway infrastructure has exposed many countries around the world to large financial losses, some of which are estimated to be in the billions of euros. Figure 7 shows flood losses in some countries in the millions of euros. ...
In light of the world's current severe climatic changes, it has been observed that the frequency of flash floods and torrents is increasing at an accelerating rate in numerous areas, exposing civil infrastructure and property to significant damage and losses. Recently, there have been many cases of torrents attacking some railway tracks in Egypt, especially in the east of the country, including the Qena-Safaga railway track, which is the main objective of this study to minimize the expected negative impacts. Torrents, or flash floods, are one of the most destructive natural hazards, especially in arid regions. Seasonally, these regions are exposed to heavy rains that cause serious flash floods with great negative impacts. In such conditions, the railway track needs maintenance, insurance, and protection against the risks of monsoon floods that hit those areas from time to time. The present study includes the most popular flash floods that attacked railway infrastructures all over the world and how they were protected, allowing them to successfully deal with these exceptional circumstances to maintain the integrity of the railway tracks and the efficiency of their performance. The study will present a classification of flash floods that occurred in Egypt and some other places in the last few decades based on multiple criteria, including severity, lifetime, direction, impacts, and the types of harmful effects on infrastructure. The goal of the study is to introduce a practical manual and procedure for how to deal successfully with flash floods that may attack the under-study railway track.
... However, in terms of employment industry, we note that excess rainfall increases the odds of being absent for those working in a shop, at home, in a market, or on a farm and is at least 1.075 higher than if there was no excess rain. The absences for shop, market, and farm can possibly be attributed to road conditions (Miller et al. 2009), which makes it difficult to get to work or the lack of public transportation given its vulnerability to weather (Leviäkangas et al. 2011;Kaufman et al. 2012). This is supported by local evidence where heavy rainfall makes it difficult for people to travel (Jamaica Observer 2019; The Gleaner 2019) and bus services have been temporarily suspended due to impassable roads from debris. ...
... Understandably, the usual rainfall levels decrease the odds of employees being absent by 0.680. One may want to note that climate extremes can possibly impact work absence through impassable roads (Spencer et al. 2016), disruption in the transportation system (Kaufman et al. 2012), and general safety concerns (Delp et al. 2009;Leviäkangas et al. 2011). In this regard, the results are limited in the sense of not being able to identify the specific channel through which a worker's absence is impacted due to climate extremes. ...
This study investigated the impact of extreme climate events on work absence in Jamaica. To this end, we constructed a quarterly individual level dataset on labor market and climatic data for 2004–2014. We find that while excess rainfall increases the odds of being temporarily absent from work, heat is unlikely to have an effect. The estimated outcome of excess rainfall is reasonable given the possibility of flooded roads, which can impede travel to work. This draws attention to the development of e-commuting policies to mitigate any negative effects on productivity.
... Adverse weather conditions (significant precipitation, excessively low air temperatures, heavy fog) affect transport industry dynamics in the short run, in particular due to disruptions in public transit schedules and delays in passenger rail services (Leviäkangas et al., 2011). A 1°C decrease in the air temperature in the winter months from the same period a year before cuts an average 0.3 pp off economic growth in passenger turnover (all else held equal), according to my calculations. ...
This article explores the impact of weather conditions on core sectors of the Ukrainian economy and the composite index of economic activity in Ukraine. We build autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models using statistical data provided by the Central Geophysical Observatory named after Boris Sreznevsky (CGO) and the State Statistics Service of Ukraine for the period 2004-2019. The obtained outcomes show that fluctuations in the air temperature and precipitation are significant determinants of output in different sectors (specifically agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and energy). Therefore, the inclusion of weather conditions into models may potentially improve the modeling properties and forecasting of economic activity.
... Damages of atmospheric frosts have economic and social consequences (Simmonds and Rashid, 2001). They can destroy the fuel transfer (Lashkari and Keykhosravi, 2010;Leviäkangas et al., 2011) and many economic activities. More importantly, the frost risks have always created some concerns in the agricultural sector, especially in spring (Snyder and de Melo-Abreu, 2005;Rahimi et al., 2007;Yue et al., 2016). ...
In order to evaluate the effects of blocking patterns on the duration of frost waves across Iran, the minimum daily temperatures of 60 weather stations were collected from 20 March 1968 to 21 June 2014. The findings, which were obtained based on the distribution tables of reported temperatures and their frequency variation graphs, resulted in identifying 114 frost waves. We obtained the daily weather maps at 500 hPa from NCEP/NCAR during the peak days of durable frosts, and it was revealed that the formation of low pressures over 20°-70°E and the dominant southwest-northeast troughs at 500 hPa facilitated the influx of cold air from both eastern Europe and central Siberia toward Iran, leading to the average frost duration of 12.4 days. Furthermore, low-pressure centers appeared in a dipole pattern in northern Iran over Caspian Sea and created durable frosts with an average duration of 15.4 days. The effect of omega shaped pattern of the geopotential height on durable frosts demonstrated a sharp difference with two recent patterns leading to the frost occurrence with a 13.3-day duration averagely. Additionally, the slow speed of cold western currents in the rex type of blocking from 30° to 50°N caused durable frosts of 14.3 days. Also, we found a specific reduction in the frequency of blocking patterns, which has occurred in the past four decades. Mostly, the blocking and non-blocking patterns cause long- and short-duration frosts over Iran, respectively.
... Damages of atmospheric frosts have economic and social consequences (Simmonds and Rashid, 2001). They can destroy the fuel transfer (Lashkari and Keykhosravi, 2010;Leviäkangas et al., 2011) and many economic activities. More importantly, the frost risks have always created some concerns in the agricultural sector, especially in spring (Snyder and de Melo-Abreu, 2005;Rahimi et al., 2007;Yue et al., 2016). ...
In order to evaluate the effects of the blocking patterns on the duration of frost waves across Iran, the minimum daily temperatures of 60 weather stations were collected from 20 March 1968 to 21 June 2014. The findings, which were obtained based on the distribution tables of reported temperatures and their frequency variation graphs, resulted in identifying 114 frost waves. We obtained daily weather maps at 500 hPa during the peak days of durable frosts from NCEP/NCAR, it was revealed that the formation of low pressures in the position of 20 - 70 eastern longitudes and the dominant location of southwest-northeast troughs at 500 hPa facilitated the influx of cold air from both Eastern Europe and Central Siberia toward Iran, leading to the average durable frosts of 12.4 days. Further, low-pressure centers appeared in the dipole patterns in Northern Iran over Caspian Sea and created the durable frosts with an average of 15.4 days. The effect of omega shape pattern of Geopotential height on durable frosts demonstrated a sharp difference with two recent patterns leading to the frost occurrence with 13.3 days duration averagely. Additionally, the slow speed of the cold western currents in the blocking of rex type from 30 to 50 north latitudes caused durable frosts of 14.3 days. Also, we found a specific reduction in the frequency of blocking patterns that it has occurred over past four decades. Mostly, the blocking patterns cause long frosts and non-blocking ones cause short ones over Iran.
The interface between the wheel and rail is extremely important in terms of safety and efficiency of rail transport. Wheel-rail interface represents an open tribological system that is strongly influenced by the environment and climate conditions. Climate changes and increase in the severity and frequency of the extreme weather events lead to the question what are the most important factors affecting the wheel-rail interface. The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of these influential factors and their impact on the behavior of the wheel-rail interface, especially adhesion. It reviews the recent research performed to clarify the role of water, weather conditions, particulate contamination and other risks related to the extreme conditions.
The transport system is critical to society. This is clearly demonstrated when the system is exposed to a shock. We discuss the significance of transport resilience and the related concepts of risk and vulnerability. Shocks to the transport system can be internal or external, natural or human-made, intentional or unintentional. Different transport subsystems are more or less susceptible depending on their robustness, redundancy and measures introduced to improve resilience. Future electrified autonomous vehicles can reduce resilience. Moreover, climate change can increase the frequency of extreme weather disturbances. Many tools have been developed to study the vulnerability of transport systems and to evaluate proposed measures to enhance resilience. Hopefully, their continued implementation and new research findings will further strengthen the resilience. The experience from Covid-19 shows that human adaptability and ingenuity when exposed to crises are very large—an unplanned and unexpected form of resilience.
Compared with air and road transport, railway transport nowadays plays an essential role in catering for continuously increasing travel demand in Sweden given its high capacity and convenience. However, as the demand approaches the maximum capacity, issues like delay propagations under mine the punctuality and reliability of railway systems. Nevertheless, punctuality in train operation is usually considered as the major indicator when passengers evaluate the service performance of railway transport. This study, therefore, attempts to quantify the relationship between the arrival delays of passenger trains and their influential factors in operation and weather condition. A stochastic modeling approach based on Wiener process is introduced to analyze the train operation. The model parameters are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation approach. A case study is carried out using data of two rail paths connecting two main railway stations, Stockholm Center and Örebro Center over a one-year period in 2009. Three data sources, consisting of train movement information, rail failure data, and weather data, are applied in this study. Models are specified and then estimated using part of the available data. Finally, several goodness-of-fit measures are evaluated to validate and compare different model specifications using an independent dataset. As a result, it is found that the predicted arrival delays have a similar tendency to the actual arrival delays. The estimation results of the model taking weather condition into account fit the actual arrival delays more precisely, largely supporting the hypotheses proposed.
First published in 1985, Mary Douglas intended Risk and Acceptability as a review of the existing literature on the state of risk theory. Unsatisfied with the current studies of risk, which she found to be flawed by individualistic and psychologistic biases, she instead uses the book to argue risk analysis from an anthropological perspective. Douglas raises questions about rational choice, the provision of public good and the autonomy of the individual.
This paper examines the relationship between household evacuation decisions and official emergency management practices in light of recent increases in the availability and diversity of hurricane-related information. While we focus on Hurricane Floyd in South Carolina, we incorporate findings of our longitudinal research effort covering the last four years and six post-1995 hurricane threats to the state. While only 64% of residents in the mandatory evacuation zone complied with the Hurricane Floyd evacuation order, over 80% agreed that calling an evacuation was an appropriate precautionary response given the uncertainties of the storm. Longitudinal surveys indicate that Horry County residents have developed a fairly robust strategy in making evacuation decisions. This “hurricane savvy” population depends more heavily on individuals' assessments of risks than on official orders. Individual assessment practices differ from official orders in that greater weight is given to household circumstances and preferences, the diligent monitoring of a variety of information sources, and the incorporation of past experiences into the decision-making process. Surveys indicate differences between the general public and officials in terms of priorities and preferences about hurricane evacuations. The public demands more information about the hurricane threat. Officials place more emphasis on planning evacuation routes and public safety measures.
Trends in indices of climate extremes are studied on the basis of daily series of temperature and precipitation observations from more than 100 meteorological stations in Europe. The period is 1946-99, a warming episode. Averaged over all stations, the indices of temperature extremes indicate "symmetric'' warming of the cold and warm tails of the distributions of daily minimum and maximum temperature in this period. However, "asymmetry'' is found for the trends if the period is split into two subperiods. For the 1946-75 subperiod, an episode of slight cooling, the annual number of warm extremes decreases, but the annual number of cold extremes does not increase. This implies a reduction in temperature variability. For the 1976-99 subperiod, an episode of pronounced warming, the annual number of warm extremes increases 2 times faster than expected from the corresponding decrease in the number of cold extremes. This implies an increase in temperature variability, which is mainly due to stagnation in the warming of the cold extremes. For precipitation, all Europe-average indices of wet extremes increase in the 1946-99 period, although the spatial coherence of the trends is low. At stations where the annual amount increases, the index that represents the fraction of the annual amount due to very wet days gives a signal of disproportionate large changes in the extremes. At stations with a decreasing annual amount, there is no such amplified response of the extremes. The indices of temperature and precipitation extremes in this study were selected from the list of climate change indices recommended by the World Meteorological Organization-Commission for Climatology (WMO-CCL) and the Research Programme on Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR). The selected indices are expressions of events with return periods of 5-60 days. This means that the annual number of events is sufficiently large to allow for meaningful trend analysis in similar to50 yr time series. Although the selected indices refer to events that may be called "soft'' climate extremes, these indices have clear impact relevance.
The effect of adverse weather conditions on the flow-occupancy and speed-flow relationships is studied. The data used in the analysis were obtained from the Queen Elizabeth Way Mississauga freeway traffic management system. Regression analyses were performed to select proper models representing the flow-occupancy and speed-flow relationship for uncongested operation. Then dummy variable multiple regression analysis techniques were used to test for significant differences in traffic operations between different weather conditions. It is concluded that adverse weather conditions reduce the slope of flow-occupancy function and cause a downward shift in the speed-flow function. Adverse weather conditions also reduce the maximum observed flow rates.
Road authorities are under increasing pressure to reduce road salt use and winter road
maintenance (WRM) expenditures while maintaining road safety and mobility. The task of
identifying priority areas for improvement within particular jurisdictions is easier if WRM data
are benchmarked and controlled for climate variability using appropriate indices. The goal of this
study was to assess the suitability of existing and modified winter weather indices in explaining
the temporal and spatial variability of salt use on highways in the Province of Ontario, Canada.
The relative performance of the SHRP, Hulme and Salt Days indices was evaluated through
linear regression using provincial salt use data, standardized by road length, and climate
information for winter seasons between 1993-1998. R-values for the provincial-level models
were greatest for the SHRP index (-.693), followed by the Salt Days (+.592) and Hulme (-.319)
indices. Modifications were made to the SHRP equation weights and constants to account for the
unique Ontario climate and to assess model sensitivity. Initial adjustments only slightly
improved the model (r = -.708) so the frost term in the index was replaced with a freezing rain
occurrence term and this modestly improved the correlation (r = -.723). The modified SHRP was
then compared with a standard regression of three individual, unweighted climate variables:
snowfall amount, freezing rain days, and temperature index. The r-value for the combined threevariable
model (+.713) was comparable with that obtained using the best modified SHRP, and
both indices explained about half of the variation in Ontario monthly salt use.