Abstract: Climate change is related with weather extremes, which may cause damages to infrastructure used by freight transport services. Heavy rainfall may lead to flooding and damage to railway lines, roads and inland waterways. Extreme drought may lead to extremely low water levels, which prevent safe navigation by inland barges. Wet and dry periods may alternate, leaving little time to repair damages. In some Western and Middle-European countries, barges have a large share in freight transport. If a main waterway is out of service, then alternatives are called for. Volume- and price-wise, trucking is not a viable alternative. Could railways be that alternative? The paper was written after the unusually long dry summer period in Europe in 2022. It deals with the question: If the Rhine, a major European waterway becomes locally inaccessible, could railways (temporarily) play a larger role in freight transport? It is a continuation of our earlier research. It contains a case study, the data of which was fed into a simulation model. The model deals with technical details like service specification route length, energy consumption and emissions. The study points to interesting rail services to keep Europe’s freight on the move. Their realization may be complex especially in terms of logistics and infrastructure, but is there an alternative?
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The adaptation of urbanised areas to climate change is currently one of the key challenges in the domain of urban policy. The diversity of environmental determinants requires the formulation of individual plans dedicated to the most significant local issues. This article serves as a methodic proposition for the stage of retrieving data (with the PESTEL and the Delphi method), systemic diagnosis (evaluation of risk and susceptibility), prognosis (goal trees, goal intensity map) and the formulation of urban adaptation plans. The suggested solution complies with the Polish guidelines for establishing adaptation plans. The proposed methodological approach guarantees the participation of various groups of stakeholders in the process of working on urban adaptation plans, which is in accordance with the current tendencies to strengthen the role of public participation in spatial management. https://doi.org/10.12911/22998993/81658
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With increase in awareness of the risks posed by climate change and increasingly severe weather events, attention has turned to the need for urgent action. While strategies to respond to flooding and drought are well-established, the effects - and effective response - to heat waves is much less understood. As heat waves become more frequent, longer-lasting and more intense, the Cool Towns project provides cities and municipalities with the knowledge and tools to become heat resilient. The first step to developing effective heat adaptation strategies is identifying which areas in the city experience the most heat stress and who are the residents most affected. This enables decision-makers to prioritise heat adaptation measures and develop a city-wide strategy.The Urban Heat Atlas is the result of four years of research. It contains a collection of heat related maps covering more than 40,000 hectares of urban areas in ten municipalities in England, Belgium, The Netherlands, and France. The maps demonstrate how to conduct a Thermal Comfort Assessment (TCA) systematically to identify heat vulnerabilities and cooling capacity in cities to enable decision-makers to set priorities for action. The comparative analyses of the collated maps also provide a first overview of the current heat resilience state of cities in North-Western Europe.
