02/08/2024

Climate Ready Infrastructure Scotland

Infrastructure across Scotland operates as a connected system and not in isolation. It means impacts from extreme weather and climate-related risks can cascade from one sector or operator to another, causing significant disruption to essential services, transport, and business operations. To effectively respond to and manage these shared climate-related risks, infrastructure organisations across Scotland need to work together to share knowledge and resources.

The Adaptation Scotland programme recently worked alongside Network Rail to co-host a collaborative industry-led workshop in Edinburgh, bringing together more than 50 organisations to share experiences of impacts from climate change and extreme weather, and ideas on how organisations present could best work together to collaboratively build resilience to future risks.

The event had 4 key objectives:

• To provide a space for owners and / or operators of infrastructure in Scotland to share their approaches to understanding climate-related risks on their assets and operations.

• To showcase some of the latest climate adaptation plans published by operators of critical national infrastructure in Scotland.

• To gather views on co-commissioning a national level climate change risk assessment focussed on risk interdependencies between infrastructure operators in Scotland.

• To gather views and inform the further development of the Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3).

Presentations from infrastructure operators – including Scottish Gas Networks, Network Rail, Scottish Water, and Scottish Power Energy Networks – set the scene for the challenges of adapting to climate change and the barriers to working together with other infrastructure operators to adapt to shared climate risks, as well as good examples of adaptation in action.

Presentations from experts including Professor Paul Davies, Principal Fellow in Weather and Climate Extremes and Impacts at the Met Office, Caitlin Douglas, Senior Analyst UK Climate Change Risk Assessment at the Climate Change Committee, and Dr Helen Adams from King’s College London, who provided an overview of the recently announced ‘Maximising UK adaptation to climate change (MACC) Hub’, where Sniffer will lead the Scotland ‘spoke’ alongside the University of Glasgow.

Following a series of collaborative activities, participants identified a shortlist of key activities to take forward future research and action by working together. These include:

• Mapping key climate-related risk interdependencies shared between owners and operators of infrastructure in Scotland;

• Developing common principles in undertaking climate change risk assessments, sharing of best practice, and development of collective climate-related data requirement;

• And developing guidance, common principles and additional requirements that would support stronger on-the-ground collaboration of adaptation interventions (e.g., co-funding flood resilience works in an area of shared risk).

To take this work forward, a new ‘Climate Ready Infrastructure Forum’ for Scotland has been proposed. This will be an action-oriented group, to take forward discrete, and tactical research and development initiatives, with the initial priorities being those emerging from the workshop. The Adaptation Scotland programme will continue to support this industry-led initiative and help to connect the Forum with adaptation action being led by regional adaptation initiatives.

To find out more about the event and the Forum, please contact David Harkin ([email protected]) or Jonny Casey ([email protected]).