Washington, DC

Climate change is putting at risk the lives of millions of people worldwide, many coastal cities, and 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.

Action is needed to diagnose systemic weaknesses and adapt transport systems to withstand expected climate impacts such as changes in rainfall, flooding, and sea-level rise as well as extreme weather events. This requires a better understanding of existing vulnerability assessment tools, cost-effective engineering measures and technologies all designed to ensure robustness, redundancy and resilience are designed into road networks.

Using real world case studies taken from different fields of engineering, this roundtable sought to identify promising applications as well as knowledge gaps that can be addressed through information and capacity strengthening programs on one of the defining challenges for 21st century road programs.