Midlands Connect: Evaluating transport route adaptation
Climate resilience scoping
The project sought to help Midlands Connect understand the challenge and opportunities associated with climate change, and how they could leverage their position as a sub-national transport body to make transport infrastructure more resilient to climate change across the region. The ambition was to perform a review, create a tool and define a process for assessing vulnerabilities to climate change on a corridor basis. This would enable Midlands Connect to incorporate climate change resilience into their transport strategy refresh.
Project
Accelar applied knowledge and expertise gained through the InnovateUK Transport Infrastructure Efficiency Strategy (TIES) Living Lab and previous projects to first identify climate change risks and mitigation opportunities, and then create a resilience baseline for key transport corridors. This involved investigating the key pinch points and strategic opportunities to improve multi-modal resilience of infrastructure across the Midlands.
Impact
Accelar produced a series of work packages to update and refine the climate resilience tool - now part of Acra, Accelar’s suite of climate resilience assessments.
Bringing together the latest in data analytics, climate projections, and impacts, 67 metrics and 21 GIS layers were analysed to to highlight infrastructure vulnerabilities across the 6 transport corridors. Interdependencies between 144 infrastructure routes were identified to inform future adaptation opportunities.
“We have worked with Accelar consistently over the last 2-3 years to integrate climate resilience and environmental appraisal into our technical programme. The expert input we have gained from Accelar has been invaluable, as has the general support and commitment to helping us deliver our climate and environmental work. The team have always demonstrated a comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge of their field and have been a pleasure to work with. We hope to continue working with Accelar in the future.”
Services
The Accelar team:
Helped MC to understand estimated climate developments across the UK and how those developments will affect their current and planned infrastructure projects.
Identified climate vulnerabilities within existing assets and planned infrastructure thereby optimising adaptation strategies and financial planning.
Reduced the need for ongoing and unexpected maintenance through proactive adaptation.
Identified opportunities for co-investment by recognising key interdependencies.
Used data-driven insights to offer reassurance for decision making and justification to ensure stakeholder agreement.
Presented resilience as an opportunity to lead the way to a more climate resilient and carbon conscious future.