Speaker
Description
Running water, electricity, organised road traffic and a healthcare system are an important part of daily life for many people worldwide. In Germany, the protection of these so-called critical infrastructures (CI) has become a concern at the national, regional, and communal levels. CI face a range of disruptive factors that heighten the need for protection. In addition to the dangers of CI being destroyed by terrorism, war and crime, human or technical failure, natural phenomena caused by climate change, such as epidemics, pandemics, cosmic activity and extreme weather conditions, play a particularly important role.
The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, aggravated by climate change, increase the risks to the resilience of CI. Events such as heavy rain, flooding, heat, and strong winds illustrate this trend. For instance, heavy rainfall in Germany in 2021 caused widespread devastation, particularly along the Ahr River, where roads, railways, and bridges were eroded. Federal highways sustained severe damage, leading to prolonged closures, while rail infrastructure required months of repair. Water and electricity supplies were temporarily interrupted, affecting around 165,000 people who were left without running water, electricity, or mobile phone connections.
Since climate change is already happening and some of its long-term consequences cannot be avoided, adaptation to the consequences of climate change is an important goal of international climate policy, alongside climate protection and limiting global warming to well below 2°C. With the German Adaptation Strategy (DAS) and the associated DAS Adaptation Action Plan, Germany is responding to climate change, which is already having a noticeable impact and is expected to do so in the future. Implementation of the measures described in the strategies would also have a positive impact on the protection and resilience of CI, thus reducing the potential damage from extreme weather events.
In order to respond to the consequences of climate change, extreme weather events of increased intensity and frequency, at the CI operator level, various approaches can be pursued. One of these approaches is the use of green infrastructure (GI). The research project Grün4KRITIS is investigating precisely this approach for the CI sectors of transport and health in the Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr area) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The aim of the research will be to improve knowledge of the resilience-enhancing effect of GI for CI and to parameterise the protective function of GI with the help of ecosystem services. Subsequently, a prioritisation of protection and further qualification of those GI elements is to be developed, the use of which has a significant impact on the protection of CI. The findings are then to be incorporated into the ‘Green Infrastructure Strategy’ of the Regionalverband Ruhr, the regional planning authority for the Ruhrgebiet and project partner of the research project, in the form of pilot measures.
From the start of the project in early 2024 until early 2025, important insights have already been gained in the areas of defining CI of regional importance. In addition, expert knowledge was collected and compiled by conducting workshops and interviews, thus laying a solid theoretical foundation for the further steps of the project.
References
European Commission (2024) Critical infrastructure resilience at EU-level. Available at: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security/counter-terrorism-and-radicalisation/protection/critical-infrastructure-resilience-eu-level_en (Accessed: 10 December 2024).
Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe (BBK) (2019) Risikoanalyse im Bevölkerungsschutz. Ein Stresstest für die Allgemeine Gefahrenabwehr und den Katastrophenschutz. Bonn: BBK.
Birkmann, J., Wenzel, F., Greiving, S., Garschagen, M., Vallée, D., Nowak, W., Welle, T., Fina, S., Goris, A., Rilling, B., Fiedrich, F., Fekete, A., Cutter, S., Düzgün, S., Ley, A., Friedrich, M., Kuhlmann, U., Novák, B., Wieprecht, S., Riegel, C., Thieken, A., Rhyner, J., Ulbrich, U. and Mitchell, J. (2016) ‘Extreme Events, Critical Infrastructures, Human Vulnerability and Strategic Planning: Emerging Research Issues’, Journal of Extreme Events, 3(4), p. 1650017. doi: 10.1142/S234573761650017
Prior, T. (2015) Measuring Critical Infrastructure Resilience: Possible Indicators. Risk and Resilience Report, 9. Zürich: Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich.
Green, D., O'Donnell, E., Johnson, M., Slater, L., Thorne, C., Zheng, S. et al. (2021) ‘Green infrastructure: The future of urban flood risk management?’, WIREs Water, 8(6), Article e1560. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1560
| Keywords | resilience; urban flooding; heat; wind; green infrastructure; critical infrastructure; climate |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
