Keeping the Midlands Engine running: a blueprint for next generation weather and climate services for transport

Reliable and resilient transport systems are crucial for sustaining national productivity and competiveness. They enable the movement of goods in increasingly complex and time-sensitive supply chains throughout the regions of the UK and globally via international gateways such as airports. As such, transport is a key feature of the Industrial Strategy's 'Upgrading Infrastructure' pillar. However, a crucial determinant of the reliability of transport which is not addressed in the Strategy is the impact of severe weather, which can cause damage to critical assets and result in widespread disruption and economic and social consequences for businesses and the travelling public. Importantly, the complex nature of the transport system with its many different components, interdependencies and critical locations poses a uniquely challenging environment for the infrastructure mangers and meteorological service providers who are tasked with reducing the disruptive impact of weather.

This project aims to formulate a blueprint for the next generation of weather services for the transport sector, which can be used to make targeted proactive decisions during extreme events to keep the system functioning. It will make use of the Met Office's recently upgraded High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities to produce asset-specific forecasts, based on a deep understanding of how these assets react to weather. Moreover, it seeks to promote the concept of Dynamic Asset Criticality (DAC), to prioritise assets according to their forecasted risk of failure in a given event and the potential consequences of that failure on the wider system. This will be developed in the case study region of the Midlands Engine, a £230 billion economy that forms part of the Industrial Strategy. It is the national leader in advanced manufacturing, a sector which relies on resilient supply chains. The project has the following work packages:

Work package 1: Creation of an Innovation Ecosystem for weather-related transport resilience. Unique, comprehensive compendia of the quantitative relationships between weather and asset failure, asset interdependencies and network criticality for the Midlands Engine will be collated. This will be in the form of collaborative online resources, where expert guidance from infrastructure managers and transport operators will supplement existing academic literature and bespoke analysis of priority research gaps. These stakeholder community resources are designed to exist and evolve beyond the duration of the project, creating a legacy of impact.

Work package 2: Developing and demonstrating a targeted approach for prioritising transport resilience responses during extreme weather events. Here the asset vulnerability information from work package 1 will inform a new suite of bespoke asset-focused weather forecasts and risk warnings utilising the Met Office's cutting-edge HPC capabilities. These will be created for a number of case studies centred on critical locations in the Midlands Engine transport network. The output of the DAC approach will be evaluated for severe weather events in a simulated trial environment with operational staff from transport operators and infrastructure managers to assess the implications of the approach for event management.

Work package 3: Formulating the blueprint for next generation weather services for transport. A White Paper will be created based on the findings and recommendations emanating from work packages 1 and 2, as well as a roadmapping workshop on anticipated developments in the transport sector and their implications for the future provision of transport-focussed weather services.

Dr David Jaroszweski is an internationally recognised, influential early career researcher in weather and climate-related transport resilience. He has demonstrated strong intellectual leadership at the interface of industry and academia which has been recognised at the highest international level.