Risk assessment of climate change impacts on railway infrastructure

Although it has been known for a while that climate-related factors account for the performance development of infrastructure, it remains difficult for infrastructure manager to estimate the effect of the anticipated climate change. The impact of climate factors differs very much between geographical locations and therefore a climate change assessment requires a more detailed analysis of the particular network. In this paper data about actual infrastructure performance of two railway tracks in the mostly populated area of the Netherlands are correlated with regional climate data in order to model future performance and apply appropriate interventions to cope with climate change effects. After establishing the correlation between weather conditions and failure modes, threshold values for probabilities of occurrence of certain failures are determined. This is enabling then the development of risk matrix based on the likelihood and risk impact, which would support an effective maintenance plan and adaptation strategies in the long term sense to mitigate or reduce likelihood of failures caused by climate change.