Erosion Hazards in River Catchments: Making Critical Infrastructure More Climate Resilient

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Society has entered a new era of climate change where the environmental consequences of warming are being observed and experienced directly. Arguably the most severe impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure will be an increase in the frequency and severity of storms, leading to more extreme erosion events. The impacts of erosion hazards are of strategic national importance because they are wide ranging, costly and critical to the vulnerability of assets. In the UK these hazards cause £336M a year in extra flood damage, are a considerable source of water pollution totalling costs of £238M a year, and increase the costs of water treatment and maintenance of drainage networks by £132M a year. They cause considerable damage to infrastructure such as bridges, flood defences and electricity pylons, and account for 25% of valid subsidence insurance claims. Thus creating resilient, sustainable infrastructure depends on understanding the potential future risks of changing erosion hazards and their impact. Yet at present, no predictive modelling framework exists for erosion hazards, and therefore we do not understand:- The future risks posed to critical infrastructure- How vulnerable and resilient these assets will be to increased frequency and severity of erosion hazards in a changing climateThus decision makers currently face questions about mitigation strategies that are very difficult to answer: (1) Where to act to make an asset more resilient? (2) When action is required: now or can investment be postponed? This feasibility project aims to provide answers to these questions by creating a new computer model to quantify how future climate scenarios will affect the frequency and severity of erosion hazards in river catchments and the vulnerability of key assets and how we might best mitigate their impact. New risk analyses will be produced to create a novel decision-support tool to provide a coherent robust evidence base for decision making. This approach will ultimately allow stakeholders to assess how they will respond to erosion hazards and enhance their mitigation strategies to provide more benefits for our societies; reducing hazard costs and improving the resilience of critical infrastructure to climate change. The outputs will include:- Scientific insights into the changing erosion risk across the UK as a result of climate projections- How erosion hazards influence the vulnerability and resilience of critical infrastructure to a changing climate- An integrated quantitative predictive modelling framework and decision-support tool that provides the much needed strong evidence base for sustainable, resilient decision making- Deepened engagement between scientists, stakeholders, industry, and NGOs.