DARe and CIHT produce joint report: Delivering a resilient transport network

This week, contributors and representatives from the highways sector came together at the CIHT Offices in London to celebrate the launch of the report.

As recent events in Europe sadly demonstrate, the changing climate is having a major impact around the world. In the UK, our ageing infrastructure is being particularly affected. Flooding, higher temperatures, storms, and severe weather are more common and accelerate failures and disruptions across highway networks.

The UK needs to improve resilience across the transport sector to ensure reliability, requiring tactical futureproofing and maintenance of our highways. This new report covers the impacts of extreme weather on physical road infrastructure, offering guidance for practitioners in implementing adaptation measures and pathways, with case studies showing successful physical interventions that can mitigate such impacts. Overall, the report shows how preparing road infrastructure now is key to long-term resilience, saving costs, and protecting communities and the economy.  

• Urgency to act now and be prepared: Adaptation and resilience should be made an immediate policy priority and investment. Extreme weather events are happening with increased frequency and intensity – it is imperative that we act now to mitigate the risk of possible losses.
• Funding for maintenance: Investment in maintenance of our existing highways and infrastructure to ensure continued, efficient use of the network. Incremental adaptation and proactive maintenance of infrastructure are crucial to improving resilience and meeting decarbonisation goals.
• Mandatory assessments of the current and future resilience of the infrastructure: Statutory requirements issued by legislative road authorities for transport asset owners to carry out resilience assessments will help identify vulnerabilities.
• Building a nationwide leadership: Road authorities should produce coherent and consistent guidance for the sector on how to undertake risk assessments on resilience, preventing non-transferable or non-shareable data and practices.