The way ahead » Case study

Gearing up for climate change

We all know about climate change, but how can we prepare for it? The summer drought of 2006 gave us some clues which have been incorporated into our plans for adapting to a changing climate in the years ahead.

In 2006, the Environment team started to build the bigger picture of the impact of climate change on Tube Lines by developing a matrix showing the effects of adverse weather on our assets. “This identified approximately 200 threats and opportunities posed by the changing climate,” says Tube Lines Graduate Naveed Mohammed, who is working with the Environment team on climate change adaptation.

Drought is one of the many threats and opportunities identified. Other impacts include the effect that extreme heat may have on track alignment and the rest of the network. At the opposite extreme of the weather spectrum is how extreme rainfall will affect station drainage.

“We are currently quantifying the financial implications of these threats and opportunities by estimating the impact they will have on a range of issues such as overtime, faults, abatements and loss of service now and up until the end of our contract, using long term climate change predictions made by UKCIP," explains Environment Adviser Shane Mc Entee. "Of course these costs are estimated but they will help us to identify the priorities which should be addressed. We are planning to run workshops across the business with a view to quantifying all of the threats and opportunities by the end of the 2007. Then we can start to prioritise them and identify how we need to adapt to the changing climate to ensure we deliver a service that works in the environment of the 2030s.

“It’s a question of looking at current processes and asking ourselves whether we should be doing things differently, identifying what we should change in the longer term. We may need to look outside the company for solutions, for example, by learning from the experiences of other countries used to dealing with the weather conditions we might expect in the future.”