To date, less than half of the Danish municipalities have developed a more or less detailed strategy to get their critical infrastructure ready for the anticipated effects of climate change. In many municipalities climate adaptation will most probably request large and long-term investments in new sewer systems, better management of rainwater and sewage flows, green areas, and others.
New decision support system
A prime reason for the inadequate response to climate change is that municipalities lack the knowledge and tools to analyse the anticipated risks. This will be addressed in a new 4-year research project called "RiskChange - Risk-based design in a changing climate", that is funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council.
"We've already got warnings of what awaits us in the coming decades. We will face heavier extreme rainfall. Moreover, sea level rise and more extreme storm surges will increase the risk of flooding from the sea at several places in Denmark, especially Lolland, Køge Bay, Copenhagen, Odense, Eastern and Southern Jutland. It is therefore very important that the municipalities start to develop credible climate adaptation strategies, such as Copenhagen and Greve municipalities have done", says Henrik Madsen, DHI, who is coordinating the research project.
The project has received 10 million DKK in grants from the Strategic Research Council Program Committee for Sustainable Energy and Environment to establish the scientific basis for the work in the municipalities. "The overall aim of the project is to develop analysis and decision support tools that the municipalities can use to assess the future risks and the investments that should be made to protect local infrastructure and buildings against the consequences of future climate change", says Henrik Madsen.
International knowledge from the latest climate research
"The international climate research community has made great progress in recent years and generated considerable knowledge of how the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases affect the global mean temperature, and which consequences it can have on sea levels and climate extremes such as intense rainfalls, storm surges, hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc. But we lack models to downscale the global and regional climate change projections to a local scale which municipalities can use to plan and act upon. By supplying such models together with the necessary tools and guidelines, they will get access to the integrated knowledge of the most recent climate change research."
The project group has already analysed the specific challenges in the municipality of Copenhagen. “The municipality is participating in the project as an end user”, Madsen explains. “You should be able to see the practical impacts of the research project when the municipality of Copenhagen presents an updated climate adaptation strategy in 2014.” This gives the project team an excellent opportunity to test the practical value of the developed models and tools. Cooperators in the project team are the Technical University of Denmark, Niels Bohr Institute and Danish Meteorological Institute as well as Det Norske Veritas and the Norwegian climate research centre Bjerknes, that will test the tools developed for climate adaptation of Oslo.
Project summary
The statistical evaluation of extreme precipitation, storm surges and extreme wave heights forms the basis of a risk assessment, that is then included in the design of infrastructure such as drainage systems, dikes and bridges. Both current and future design of infrastructure need to be evaluated in the light of projected anthropogenic climate change, which is expected to result in, amongst others, heavier extreme rainfall, general sea level rise and changes in storm surges.
However, there are large uncertainties associated with the estimated magnitude of these changes, and there is a need to downscale the predictions from the global and regional climate models to a local scale, which is essential for risk analysis and assessment of climate change adaptation measures on a municipality scale.
The project will establish a scientific basis for design and adaptation of critical infrastructure based on recent knowledge of changes in climate extremes. Statistical methods will be developed to describe the underlying uncertainties in climate modeling and downscaling and quantify the expected changes in climate extremes for different projection horizons. The project will contribute to the development of planning and decision support tools for the authorities and provide the basis for establishing design and adaptation guidelines and associated tools.