Tackling challenges together: Cambridgeshire workshop

On 23 June, stakeholders met with DARe team members in Cambridge for a case study workshop on multi-stakeholder decision-making for transport climate resilience. Taking place during a heatwave, the event highlighted the urgent need to adapt infrastructure to extreme weather, with temperatures in the Cambridge area reaching around 30°C.

Hosted by Dr Mashael Kamran (University of Cambridge) and Professor Jennifer Schooling (Anglia Ruskin University), the workshop brought together researchers and regional stakeholders involved in DARe’s Cambridgeshire Case Study to address key challenges, including ageing infrastructure, climate risks, and growing congestion. Nationally, there is an estimated £18.6 million funding gap needed to bring local roads up to a steady state.

The day began with a focus on vulnerability vectors for ageing assets, climate impacts, and rising demand. Presentations from the DARe team focused on presenting the Hub’s work around infrastructure deterioration, climate hazard mapping and emerging risk models linking ageing systems with environmental stress. The following discussions highlighted how future climate hazards, including heatwaves, heavy rainfall events, and droughts may exacerbate infrastructure deterioration and traffic performance. Participants identified areas where risks may become concentrated in the future, providing an initial indication of potential transport risk hotspots across the Cambridgeshire region.

The workshop also focused on identifying impacts and interventions. Through group work, participants applied systems thinking to explore potential interventions that can inform transformation pathways to address how Cambridgeshire’s transport systems owners and operators can adopt a more joined-up, long-term approach to preparing for future climate conditions and economic development in the region.

The workshop emphasised the value of collaboration in tackling complex, interconnected transport issues – a joined-up approach supported by DARe’s Transport Performance and Risk Analysis Framework (TPRAF).

Dr Mashael Kamran said: “This workshop represents a key stage in the case study, focused on the ideation of potential solutions across the interconnected transport system, creating a basis for developing possible transformation pathways for the region.

Holding this workshop provided a valuable co-creation environment that would not have been possible through individual discussions alone. Bringing different stakeholders into the same discussion helped reveal how potential responses may affect different parts of the interconnected transport system. This collaborative process added value by enabling stakeholders to test ideas collectively, explore where interventions could respond to multiple vulnerabilities and future pressures, and consider whether proposed solutions were complementary or could create trade-offs or unintended consequences. The workshop supported a joined-up approach to decision-making by enabling future transport needs to be considered from a system-wide perspective.”

This workshop is the latest of several events the DARe team have hosted in Cambridge. Throughout the series the Hub has sought to bring together variety of stakeholders from cross the region to collect multiple, diverse perspectives, and help identify and explore the region’s key transport-related challenges. Building on the previous two workshops, which established regional contextual factors, stakeholder data and information needs, critical and vulnerable transport points, and stakeholder priorities and roles within the transport system, this workshop will help the DARe team to further develop the Cambridgeshire case study and DARe TPRAF, with an aim to provide tools to support more informed, integrated, and collaborative planning and decision making.