Climate change impacts need concrete resilience

So far, 2022 has seen heavy flooding and extreme heatwaves. Both are indicative of the impacts of climate change. Both have had detrimental impacts on UK transport networks. A new report from Britpave, the infrastructure industry association, calls for transport infrastructure that can cope with extreme weather events.

This year, the cluster of three major storms in February and the extreme heatwaves of the summer have underlined the impacts that major weather events can have upon our transport infrastructure. This includes severe flooding and erosion damage plus road and runway surfaces melting.

The most recent analysis of the UK climate by the Royal Meteorological Society, ‘State of the UK Climate 2020’ published in 2021, showed that the impacts of climate change are already being felt across the UK with records being broken for daily rainfall and monthly sunshine hours that included severe flooding from heavy rainfall in February 2020 and a major heatwave in August 2020. 2022 is already on course to break more records with record heatwave temperatures in July and August and the cluster of three major storms – Dudley, Eunice and Franklin – during February.

Future forecasts for the climate do not look good with the Met Office predicting that current heatwaves exceeding 32oC could by 2070 by exceeded by summer temperatures regularly reaching 40oC. The intensity of rainfall could see summer heavy rainfall increase by 20%. In winter, it could increase by 25%.

The report, ‘Concrete resilience: protecting transport infrastructure from the impacts of climate change’, calls for transport infrastructure to have built-in resilience and be future-proofed against the impacts of climate change. It points out that concrete infrastructure does not melt or catch fire. It is resilient to summer heatwave temperatures. The stiffness of concrete surfaces remains constant and will not suffer from softening or rutting. This stiffness and ability to carry traffic loads remains for the performance life of the concrete pavement. Concrete pavements and rail systems thus provide better environmental and economic solutions as they will not need maintenance or repair after heatwaves. As well as being heat resistant, concrete is also water resistant. This inherent performance benefit enables concrete roads to withstand the impacts of increased rainfall and flooding.

Joe Quirke, Britpave chairman, said: “As the evidence of climate change continues to increase so does the need to have a transport infrastructure that can withstand the impacts of extreme temperature and flooding events. Concrete roads, rail and runways provide the required long-term robustness with minimum maintenance that enable our transport networks to continue to function safely and cost-effectively.”