Resilient Mobility Systems: foresight for strategic coastal infrastructure planning

This studentship will advance and up-scale a novel cross-disciplinary approach to estimating future overtopping events, transport infrastructure damages, and subsequent service disruption and socio-economic impacts at a regional scale. By establishing new empirical relationships between historical sea-level trends and past transport disruptions, modelled projections of future sea-level rise will be use to calculate future impacts around the UK.

Using databases of UK road and rail infrastructure, alongside high resolution Digital Elevation Models, assets at risk of future sea-level rise will be identified and categorised. A framework for prioritising future investment decisions is criticality needed, and must consider both future vulnerability and exposure to hazards.

In order to develop more robust adaptation pathways, the analysis must be integrated with novel economic approaches allowing the uncertainties of the latest sea-level data to be incorporated into the decision making. The results will generate adaptation pathways for national strategic planning to increase the resilience of future mobility systems.

The studentship will provide the opportunity to engage with academics, practitioners, and transport & policy makers in the field of climate resilience and planning.

Co-supervisor: Dr Natasha Barlow.