doi:10.3850/978-981-08-6396-8_P123


Climate Change Adaptation and Underground Rail Transit Systems


Douglas Crawford-Brown1, Leslie Pakianathan2 and Nick Osborne2

1Professor Emeritus and Executive Director, Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research,
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

2Mott MacDonald, Singapore Pte Ltd

ABSTRACT

Underground transit systems are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change in coastal communities due to increased storm frequency and intensity, sea level rise and changes in precipitation. This paper reviews the key issues of risk reduction for such systems, examining the engineering issues, economic implications and strategies of asset management. Considerations examined include 1) Flood protection at stations; 2) Flood protection at run-ning tunnels; 3) Protection against winds for walkways, canopies and surface structures; and 4) Temperature rise affecting ventilation and station cooling designs. These issues are explored in the context of climate change risk re-duction measures designed for the Singapore and London underground transit systems, with attention directed to both design of the underground system and the links between that system and flood risk management designs for surface features. All of these issues are placed within a framework of risk assessment and adaptive management through strategies involving changes in the built environment, organizational behaviour and data collection as cli-mate change impacts are better understood over time.

Keywords: Climate change, Adaptation, Underground rail.



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