Abstract for: Integrated system dynamics modelling of climate resilience in transport infrastructure networks

Climate change poses increasing risks to transport infrastructure, necessitating evidence-based policies to ensure resilience, cost-effectiveness, and long-term sustainability. Current policies and sectoral understanding don’t effectively capture the complex interactions between climate hazards, transport infrastructure performance, socio-economic impacts, adaptation interventions, and economic trade-offs. This paper focusses on integrating Systems Dynamic Modelling with climate risk assessments and infrastructure planning to support adaptive decision- and policymaking to identify potential social, economic and environmental consequences of a reactive approach (i.e. no consideration of climate change) compared to when a proactive approach is implemented in the planning and development of transport infrastructure. The systems dynamic model showed that a business-as-usual (BAU) approach leads to a sharp increase in the maintenance costs that are incurred by infrastructure owners due to recurring damage resulting from climate-related disasters. The model also showed that proactive resilience investments will yield lower long-term costs and overall improved infrastructure reliability. A delay in implementing climate adaptation policy that is focused on transport infrastructure significantly reduces effectiveness. Diagram created using AI