Mainstreaming Climate Resilience in Road Project
Frequently presented as one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, climate change is putting at risk the lives of millions of people worldwide, as well as trillions of dollars of investment in transport infrastructure and services. A transport system that cannot withstand the emerging impacts of climate change will prove burdensome, impose high costs for repair, and cause significant economic losses.
Against this background, IRF held a practitioner-driven seminar on "Road System Resilience to Climate Change & Extreme Weather Events" in Goyang, Korea, on November 15-17, 2017 attended by representatives from 8 countries.
The main objectives of the course were to share the current state of the art on vulnerability assessment tools, cost-effective engineering measures and technologies all designed to ensure robustness, redundancy, and resilience are designed into road networks.
“Delegates were from eight countries of four different continents: Africa, America, Asia and Europe. The variety of participants enabled the attendees to learn and exchange a wide variety of practices and experiences" noted Dr. Kyung-Soo Yoo, Advisor, Korea Road Association, 79/80 Class IRF Fellow and 2017 IRF Professional of the Year.
“The audience, not only listened intently to the presentations, but asked numerous questions and engaged in discussions about climate change effects on their countries. They also recounted significant extreme climate effects that are impacting their roadway systems. Consulpav is proud to be a sponsor of this conference because the roadway improvement products and services that it offers are tailored to meet the future challenges of climate change", according to George Way, Consulpav International.
Dr. Kamil Elias Kaloush, Professor, Arizona State University, and lead instructor for the course noted that the discussions demonstrated the complexity of designing and maintaining roads of the future; but on a positive note, promising materials and technologies are also within reach.