The Climate Adaptation Platform Washington Workshop Booklet

Summary

The Climate Adaptation Platform has been formed in response to the challenge of climate adaptation in Asia Pacific. It brings together New Zealand’s leading engineers and researchers in relevant fields, transportation and infrastructure, structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, hydrology and coastal engineering, building management, disaster responses and resilience, to human and developmental sciences and population health. It combines the insights from the latest research with the practical experience of New Zealand’s largest engineering and construction consultancies.

Date and time: Wednesday 11th January 2017 – 2:30pm to 5:00pm
Location: Room MC9-100, The World Bank, Washington D.C.

Workshop Objectives:

Introduce the climate adaptation and resilience capability in New Zealand, including the newly formed Climate Adaptation Platform.
Identify what are the key research questions that still need to be answered
Identify the priority research areas and topics

Schedule:

National/Country Level

Introduction and Overview of the New Zealand Resilience Framework and the Climate Adaptation Platform
Presenter: Dr Theuns Henning – 30 mins
Synopsis: New Zealand as a country is not new to natural disaster events. This presentation briefly summarises the work that has been completed on national level to ensure: “New Zealand’s infrastructure is resilient and coordinated and contributes to economic growth and increased quality of life.”

Regional Level

Overview of Auckland Lifelines Work
Presenter: Kerry Griffiths – 15 mins
Synopsis: The regional Life-line initiatives are perhaps one of the most important strategies New Zealand has adopted in order to improve resilience at a regional level. Not all elements of infrastructure require high resilience nor would it be cost effective for infrastructure systems that guarantee supply of services at all times. The life-line project uses criticality indicators, pinch-points and hotspots in order to develop strategies for a region to be better prepared for natural disaster events. This presentation will give an introduction to some of the main Lifeline work strategies.

Local/Micro Level

Valuing Resilience in Infrastructure
Presenter:Monique Cornish – 15 mins
Synopsis: Resilience is universally understood to be a ‘good’ concept. Improving the ability to prevent, or respond to disruption is objectively desirable. However, the means by which we look to achieve resilience is more subjective and debatable:

What do we want to be resilient to?
How do we prioritize investment to improve resilience to disruption?
Which stakeholders should be consulted when making decisions about resilience?

This presentation briefly explains the development of an updatable ‘decision support tool’ to consistently weigh up different controls, to create an acceptable level of resilience in (transport) infrastructure with priority given to desired community outcomes.

Special Technical Topics

Epoxy OGPA, and how it is less temperature susceptible to rutting given rising temperatures
Presenter: Phil Herrington (15 minutes)
Synopsis: Climate change is potentially associated with increased frequency of extreme rainfall events and increased average road temperatures, both of which have adverse consequences for road surfacing. Porous asphalt surfacing provides superior drainage and reduced water spray in wet weather but suffer from relatively short lives due to oxidation, the latter is likely to only become a greater problem in the future. This presentation describes the development and properties of an epoxy resin modified, open graded porous asphalt surfacing that has both high strength and extreme resistance to oxidation, promising lifetimes in excess of 30 years.
Role of Asset Management in climate adaptation and resilience building
Presenter: Dr Theuns Henning – 15 mins
Synopsis: This presentation gives an overview of how asset management practices should be modified to ready a road authority for climate change – ranging from modifications of high level policy statements; through to the maintenance of key assets. During the presentation, some developments in decision making under uncertainty will also be introduced.
Integrating Climate Change into Road Asset Management
Presenter: Prof. Susan Tighe
Synopsis: This presentation shows the importance of Robust Asset Management (AM) and adjustments to the AM process. Prof. Tighe also discusses on the development priorities.