Delivering a Climate Change Adaptation Knowledge Pipeline for Resilient Future Mobility
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: Civil Engineering
Abstract
Public transport is the cornerstone of modern society, enabling people to access education, employment, healthcare, leisure activities, and more. However, public transport can be disrupted by extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall or extreme heat, which are increasing in frequency and intensity under our changing climate. Longer-term, transport systems may be impacted by more gradual changes such as a different future climate that requires different operating thresholds for infrastructure assets, or sea level rise that makes coastal infrastructure no longer viable. It is therefore essential that our infrastructure is resilient to current and future weather and climate hazards. Access to resilient public transport is crucial to all society, but in particular those with a low income, ethnic minorities, the elderly, women, and other marginalised communities. Equal socioeconomic opportunities can be facilitated by resilient public transport.
Worryingly, despite the urgent need for engineers and other transport practitioners to understand and address the need for climate change adaptation, the topic is not routinely taught within Higher Education curricula. Although national transport providers such as Network Rail have produced world-leading Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation (WRCCA) plans, the knowledge is siloed within the WRCCA team, and not widespread across the organisation. Excepting Transport for London, there are no regional-level adaptation plans for light rail or urban metro systems. For a journey to be climate resilient, the start and end of every journey must be resilient, not just the trunk route. The recent third Climate Change Risk Assessment report for the UK (2021) highlighted that the adaptation gap had increased since the 2017 second report, as a consequence of inaction. Adapting early reduced future costs.
Education and skills building is therefore urgently required across all career stages to enable transport practitioners to understand how to adapt their infrastructure to current weather and future climate change. Consequently, this Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowship will deliver a Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) Knowledge Pipeline between Higher Education (HE) and professional training, to improve national and regional capability and ensure resilient future mobility.
Worryingly, despite the urgent need for engineers and other transport practitioners to understand and address the need for climate change adaptation, the topic is not routinely taught within Higher Education curricula. Although national transport providers such as Network Rail have produced world-leading Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation (WRCCA) plans, the knowledge is siloed within the WRCCA team, and not widespread across the organisation. Excepting Transport for London, there are no regional-level adaptation plans for light rail or urban metro systems. For a journey to be climate resilient, the start and end of every journey must be resilient, not just the trunk route. The recent third Climate Change Risk Assessment report for the UK (2021) highlighted that the adaptation gap had increased since the 2017 second report, as a consequence of inaction. Adapting early reduced future costs.
Education and skills building is therefore urgently required across all career stages to enable transport practitioners to understand how to adapt their infrastructure to current weather and future climate change. Consequently, this Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowship will deliver a Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) Knowledge Pipeline between Higher Education (HE) and professional training, to improve national and regional capability and ensure resilient future mobility.
Organisations
Publications
Fisher R
(2024)
Climate change resilience beyond the mainline railway: a review
in Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Civil Engineering
Begum S
(2022)
Evaluation of Climate Change Resilience of Urban Road Network Strategies
in Infrastructures
Fisher R
(2024)
Learning to Adapt: A Climate Change Adaptation Competence Matrix
Axelithioti P
(2023)
What Are We Teaching Engineers about Climate Change? Presenting the MACC Evaluation of Climate Change Education
in Education Sciences
| Description | The award has had 3 key achievements. 1) Establishing a methodology to evaluate higher education (or any training/curriculum) in terms of it's coverage of climate change (mitigation and adaptation). This has been evidenced in a published journal article (Axelithioti, P. et al, 2023). 2) Identifying not only the urgent need for climate change adaptation training for transport industry professionals but also the type of knowledge and skills that different types of professionals (strategy manager<--> maintenance technician) need. These findings have been reported in an industry briefing note and a pre-print journal article (Fisher & Ferranti, 2024). The methodology used to develop the outputs is transferable and the climate change adaptation competence framework could be applied across different disciplines which relate to infrastructure asset management (beyond transport). 3) The award developed and delivered a range of industry training workshops and materials for national railway stakeholders and for international transport ministers. These interactive workshops have ranged from 1-2 hours to 2 days ranging from covering foundational information through to exploring complex topics such as adaptation pathways. |
| Exploitation Route | 1) The MACC (Mitigation and Adaptation of Climate Change) evaluation of climate change education provides a framework with which to evaluate curricula for its climate change content and therefore identify where there are gaps that can then be addressed. Whilst this has been applied in the context of Engineering higher Education it can easily be adapted to be applied in other settings. For example, engineering courses at other institutions, other types of course or even competence frameworks and training for industry practitioners. 2) The climate change competence framework can be used to develop comprehensive training for transport industry professionals by informing the learning objectives of any such training. This could be done by HE institutions or other education providers or by the relevant professional institutions to inform their Continued Professional Development training offering. 3) The the interactive workshops have reached nearly 500 people from the general public and industry stakeholders through to local government and national governments in the UK, Eastern Europe and West Asia. They have been well received, prompted insightful discussion and have been reported to have led to greater awareness of adaptation within a number of organisations amongst senior leadership. This is an exciting development as this is the first steps in greater uptake of adaptation action and resilience of transport systems. The knowledge and skills developed in these sessions by practitioners and policymakers will be influencing the decisions they make movign forwards. |
| Sectors | Construction Education Energy Environment Transport |
| Description | There has been a significant growth in interest amongst less mature rail industry organisations such as train operating companies in improving their adaptive capacity. Both in terms of training for individuals across their organisation and in terms of developing policy and technical solutions to improve their resilience to extreme weather impacts and future climate change. Following the first interactive workshop in partnership with Southeastern Railways (140 attendees) we have done numerous subsequent events and received excellent feedback from individuals and been asked to support other organisations as well (LNER, DfT, UNECE Inland Transport Committee). Most recently this raised appetite across the industry for better understanding of climate change adaptation was reflected in the inclusion of climate change adaptation on the agenda for the Connected Leaders programme. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2024 |
| Sector | Construction,Education,Environment,Transport |
| Impact Types | Societal Policy & public services |
| Description | "Knowledge Exchange for Climate Resilient Transport Infrastructure" Presentation at the Transport Research Board Annual Meeting 2023 Washington DC |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited to present on the topic of climate change and transport broadly at the Transport Research Boards Annual Meeting in Washington DC. This is an international conference with over 10,000 delegates, the session audience was around 75 people from a wide variety of backgrounds. As I do not have research results yet from my project I presented on actions to be taken to undertake more effective knowledge exchange within the context of improving the resilience of infrastructure. The first action relates to this project directly, education and training, whilst the other four are linked indirectly. The presentation was well received by the audience with a number of attendees reporting that it was very insightful and had made them think about how they approach things in their work. In particular one of these people is the head of sustainability and climate change at Amtrak an American railway business. We had further discussions in a separate call including about the topic of the presentation. Other interested parties included consultancies and academics. The presentation successfully influenced a wide array of people across the audience. I have also shared the slides publicly on social media where they have had interest. As this was successful I will likely deliver this presentation again as it can support improved knowledge exchange across many groups. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/19116 |
| Description | Clark Lecture School of Engineering (Poster) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A poster of the project was presented alongside others as part of a display for the annual Clark Lecture 2023 which focused on "Prioritizing Adaptation for Resilient Infrastructure". The lecture was well attended, somewhere between 100-200 audience members. I spoke with at least 3 people at this event who found the project insightful and would look out for further outputs from the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/engineering/events/2023/clark-lecture-2023.aspx |
| Description | Climate Change Workshop for Rail Industry Connected Leaders Event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Connected leaders is a programme to support the leadership development of railway industry professionals across a number of organisations. as part of this programme of activity they spend a day learning about the latest research in rail at the University of Birmingham Centre for rail research and Education. For the first time Climate Change Adaptation has been included on the programme and myself and a colleague delivered a presentation of our research group's work. But to ensure the audience had a baseline understanding of what climate change adaptation is I also did a very short version of the interactive workshops I have been designing and delivering. I was able to provide this training for 25 industry leaders from national government and the railway industry to increase their adaptive capacity. This led to some very engaging discussion with us as experts and presenters and between how climate change is affecting different organisations across the industry and how they need to work together to be resilient. The event was two days ago and I have already received two emails about further collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bcrre_railway-industry-connectedleaders-activity-7303497936145924096-... |
| Description | DfT workshop for Train Operating Companies |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | as there is a changing policy landscape the DfT held an event with Train Operating Companies environmental and business resilience leads. We were invited to deliver an interactive workshop focused on the particular issues and solutions for train operating companies in the face of a changing climate. The workshops use fictional future weather scenarios, there was an attendee from the met office who reportedly commended the accuracy of the weather scenario I'd developed to my colleague. We were ale to reach 50 representatives from Train Operating Companies, Rolling Stock Companies, Freight Operating Companies and the Department for Transport at this event. We have since had greater engagement with Avanti West Coast and are currently delivering a "Resilient Train Operating Company Data Map" for them as a result of this event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | EDGE Debate - Climate Change Education Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 51 professionals and stakeholders were gathered to workshop ideas related to greater inclusion of climate change in higher education degree programmes relating to the built environment. I was invited due to the work I am undertaking as part of this project. I was personally thanked for raising the profile of climate change adaptation education by Baroness Brown (CCC) and approached by multiple participants after the workshop who found my contributions insightful. I have been invited to a follow up event March 2024. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://edgedebate.com/ |
| Description | LNER Workshop on Climate Change Adaptation for Train Operating Companies |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Following the success of our workshop on climate change adaptation for Southeastern Railways we were invited by another Train Operating Company to be involved in their annual health and safety conference to conduct an interactive workshop on climate change adaptation for London North Eastern railways. The event had 150 attendees from across LNERs business as well as a few attendees from the wider industry. At another event 3 months later (DfT workshop also recorded separately) the Environment Manager for LNER reported that she had overheard senior leaders within LNER ask "how will this be affected by climate change?" without any prompting from her or immediate colleagues. This shows that the workshop has raised the adaptive capacity of both individuals at LNER and therefore resulted in a greater adaptive capacity across their organisation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Presentation at IOAF Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented the results of the transport industry survey at the Infrastructure Operators Adaptation Forum's Autumn Quarterly Meeting. There was discussion about the results, requests for further details once they are available (mainly the academic paper) and requests to be engaged at later stages in the project. Namely, HS2 and National Highways being the most significant requests for involvement at later stages. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Presentation at TfL's TASG |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented the results of the transport industry survey at the Autumn Transport Adaptation Steering Group meeting led by TfL. TfL are already a partner on the project so this provided an update on progress as well as raising awareness of the project within the organisation/region. Requests to be updated on the details of the results were the most significant outcome of this engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Southeastern Railways Adaptation Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Southeastern Railways organised a railway industry conference event to engage with the topic of climate change and adaptation for a wide range of stakeholders across the railway industry. I co-designed and delivered and interactive workshop activity relating to weather impacts and best practice for risk management and adaptation. There was a total of 140 attendees. Everyone enthusiastically engaged with the workshop and provided their responses to the scenarios posed to the different groups. We have also been approached by Southeastern Railways to do further work embedding resilience into their seasonal strategy and asset management guidance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Two Day interactive workshop for Rail Industry and Transport Policy Makers from across the Trans-Caspian Region |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | We were asked by the UNECE Committee for Inland Transport to deliver a two day interactive workshop for a group of 30 transport ministers and railway leaders from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Türkiye and Uzbekistan. The previous workshops that I had developed and delivered were expanded to include examples from these countries (rather than GB) and the climate changes that are expected in these countries. We expanded the activities to include the development of adaptation pathways. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | West Midlands Combined Authority Citizens Panel Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I was invited to design and deliver an interactive workshop session as part of the West Midlands Combined Authority's Citizens Panel. The panel is a group of 50 people from across the West Midlands who are being engaged in exploring topics such as climate change and transport and come from a diverse cross section of the population of the West Midlands. I was able to communicate the impacts of climate change on transport to a none-scientific audience and get them engaged in developing adaptation solutions for the different types of transport they use and depend on in the West Midlands. The activity prompted enthusiastic discussion and feedback to the group about the specific weather impacts they see in their daily lives and starting to come up with solutions both for individual private citizens and for transport industry professionals and policymakers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Workshop on Climate Change Adaptation for Rail for Women in Rail |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I delivered a 2 hour interactive workshop for Women in Rail. The event was attended by around 30 attendees. These were largely WiR members from industry who are professional practitioners, however some were from the wider railway industry as well. Further the event was open to our post-graduate students to attend so there was around 5 of them in total. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://womeninrail.org/events/west-midlands-extreme-weather/ |