Effects of Climate Change on Infrastructures

Mission Statement/Objectives
According to IPCC climate change predictions, countries around the world will likely face dramatic climate changes in the near future. More floods, drier summers and wetter winters are expected, along with the rise of sea levels and increase of wind speeds. The operational issues imposed on civil engineering structures by the change in temperature, precipitation, sea level etc. are already recognized. The goal of this Task Group is to characterize not only the severity of impacts but also give recommendations for mitigation and remediation strategies for buildings, bridges and other civil engineering structures. More specifically, the project promotes the technical discussion of topics related to:

• the main effects of climate change and their consequences on structural performance, in the context of evolving loads, load frequencies or loading scenarios
• mitigation and remediation solutions to enhance resilience of infrastructures to extreme weather events in the short, medium and long-term
• the development of cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment methodologies, modelling, engineering design, technology, asset management, optimization under uncertainty where the cost of loss or remediation following the hazard impact is compared to the cost of applied mitigation
  
  

Scope & Limitation
The project considers the criticality of particular structures, i.e. the impact of their failure in the operation/functionality of the systems they belong to (e.g. transport systems in the case of bridges). The team may also propose some revision aspects of design standards (i.e. climate adaptation measures) to reduce the impacts of climate change on structures. Such revisions will focus on limit state failure verifications, global failure aspects and foreseen consequences of extreme events on built infrastructure (use of probabilistic approaches, risk analysis frameworks, etc).

TG 6.1 will also aim to provide guidance for assessing existing structures and their adaptation in view of climate changes. The project shall include analyzing adaptation options in maintenance planning to mitigate the impact and enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of structures to changing climate, e.g. simulate impacts of climate change on carbonation and corrosion through penetration of chloride in existing concrete. This approach will consider environmental variables and their uncertainties as well as material properties. The objective will be to identify a number of climate change adaptation options and to determine their effectiveness.

Expected Project Output
The Task Group plans to work on case studies where the effects of climate change are taken into account. The organization of a workshop relevant to the project results is another objective.

Start Date: November, 2023
Target Date of Completion: December 31, 2026

Chair
Alan O’Connor, Ireland

Vice Chair                                                     Emilio Bastidas-Arteaga, France

Members

André Orcesi, France

Mitsuyoshi Akiyama, Japan

Abdul Kadir Alhamid, Japan
Angel Aparicio, Spain
Jorge Ballester, Spain

Jimmy Barratt-Thorne, United Kingdom
Thomas Bles, The Netherlands
Joan Ramon Casas, Spain
Dimitris Diamantidis, Germany
Matilda Djidara, Germany
Andrew Foster, United Kingdom
Lara Hawchar, Ireland
Boulent Imam, United Kingdom
Katerina Kreislova, Czech Republic
Yue Li, USA
Olga Markogiannaki, Greece
Panagiotis Michalis, Croatia
Maria Pregnolato, United Kingdom
Xin Ruan, China
Paraic C. Ryan, Ireland
Babak Salarieh, USA
Abdullahi M. Salman, USA
Franziska Schmidt, France
Franck Schoefs, France
Mark Stewart, Australia
Miroslav Sýkora, Czech Republic
Solomon Tesfamariam, Canada
Sudip Talukdar, Canada
Teng Wu, USA
Ana Margarido Bento, Portugal

Marija Kušter Marić, Croatia

Michel Ghosh, USA

Pr. De-Cheng Feng, China

Johan Jonsonn, Sweden