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Global warming to increase flood risk on European railways

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Abstract

For effective disaster risk management and adaptation planning, a good understanding of current and projected flood risk is required. Recent advances in quantifying flood risk at the regional and global scale have largely neglected critical infrastructure, or addressed this important sector with insufficient detail. Here, we present the first European-wide assessment of current and future flood risk to railway tracks for different global warming scenarios using an infrastructure-specific damage model. We find that the present risk, measured as expected annual damage, to railway networks in Europe is approx. €581 million per year, with the highest risk relative to the length of the network in North Macedonia, Croatia, Norway, Portugal, and Germany. Based on an ensemble of climate projections for RCP8.5, we show that current risk to railway networks is projected to increase by 255% under a 1.5 °C, by 281% under a 2 °C, and by 310% under a 3 °C warming scenario. The largest increases in risk under a 3 °C scenario are projected for Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, and Belgium. Our advances in the projection of flood risk to railway infrastructure are important given their criticality, and because losses to public infrastructure are usually not insured or even uninsurable in the private market. To cover the risk increase due to climate change, European member states would need to increase expenditure in transport by €1.22 billion annually under a 3 °C warming scenario without further adaptation. Limiting global warming to the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement would result in avoided losses of €317 million annually.

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Notes

  1. https://goo.gl/9MRfky, last accessed on 18th of January 2018

  2. https://goo.gl/qQipfq, last accessed on 18th of January 2018.

  3. http://www.openrailwaymap.org/

  4. https://inside.bahn.de/vde-8-schnellfahrstrecke/, last accessed on 22nd of January 2018.

  5. https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/passenger-tonne-line-kilometers_timeseries-over-period-2004-2016.pdf

  6. Since no values were provided from Eurostat for North Macedonia, North Macedonia was excluded from this analysis as far as the analysis for expenditures in transport are concerned (see Table S3).

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Funding

Lorenzo Alfieri and Luc Feyen received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–2013 under grant agreement no 603864 (HELIX: “High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes”; www.helixclimate.eu) and from DG CLIMA of the European Commission under the administrative agreement N° 340202/2017/763714/SER/CLIMA.A.3 (PESETAIV: “Climate impacts and adaptation in Europe”). Patric Kellermann received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007–2013 under grant agreement no 308438 (ENHANCE: “Enhancing risk management partnerships for catastrophic natural hazards in Europe; http://www.enhanceproject.eu/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476, Potsdam, Germany

    Philip Bubeck, Lisa Dillenardt, Annegret H. Thieken & Patric Kellermann

  2. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate E – Space, Security and Migration, Via E. Fermi 2749, 21027, Ispra, VA, Italy

    Lorenzo Alfieri & Luc Feyen

  3. Section 4.4 Hydrology, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Patric Kellermann

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  1. Philip Bubeck
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  2. Lisa Dillenardt
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  3. Lorenzo Alfieri
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  4. Luc Feyen
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  5. Annegret H. Thieken
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  6. Patric Kellermann
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Correspondence to Philip Bubeck.

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Bubeck, P., Dillenardt, L., Alfieri, L. et al. Global warming to increase flood risk on European railways. Climatic Change 155, 19–36 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02434-5

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