Tuesday, December 3, 2024
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CIHT report calls for climate mitigation strategy

A new report by the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) has outlined how the sector must mitigate climage change as world leaders meet at COP 29 this week.

The study, called ‘Delivering a resilient transport network’, provides an overview of the impacts of extreme weather on road infrastructure and uses case studies to show how implementing ad hoc adaptation pathways and physical interventions can have genuine success.

It also highlights that the highways and transport sector needs serious prioritisation in this period of climate emergency.

Key takeaways include ensuring adaptation and resilience with an “immediate investment and policy priority” across all governmental transport strategies. The CIHT said there was a risk of significant and expensive infrastructure failures if resilience measures are not recognised as key strategic objectives now.

It also said there needed to be funding for maintenance to ensure resilience of the transport network, including incrementally adapting infrastructure.

In addition, it called for mandatory assessments of the current and future resilience of infrastructure, including road authorities making it a statutory requirement for all transport asset owners to carry out transport resilience assessments. This would identify vulnerabilities in the network, prioritise remedial action and identify who should be responsible.

The institution also calls for building nationwide leadership, and encourages “coherent and consistent” guidance on how to undertake risk assessments on resilience, and avoid operators and owners developing their own internal assessments, which would lead to non-transferable or non-sharable data.

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