Building railway transport resilience to alpine hazards
Torrents, mudflows, rock fall, avalanches and floods regularly damage Austrian alpine railways; this case study looked at two lines in detail and at how the rail operator shares risk and costs.
- Region: alpine railway lines in Austria
- Hazards: floods, debris flows and torrents, landslides, rock fall and avalanches
- Period: present conditions and future climate change
- Partners as printed: Austrian Railway Infrastructure AG (ÖBB Infra), the Ministry of Transport (noted as less involved), and the University of Potsdam, with Annegret Thieken as contact
Alpine hazards regularly damage tracks and bridges on Austrian railways and force lines to close. The case study set out to make those lines more resilient and examined two tracks in detail.
ÖBB Infra, the infrastructure company of Austrian Railways, was the central actor. The partnership had two weaknesses: information was not exchanged evenly between the partners, and they disagreed on how costs should be shared. The Ministry of Transport was noted as less involved. An interview with Andreas Schöbel of OpenTrack Railway Technology, which worked on the case, added that the ministry had no staff dedicated to alpine rail resilience (interview with Andreas Schöbel).
ENHANCE brought several methods to the problem:
- multi-criteria analysis, which weighs options on more than cost and benefit alone;
- detailed assessment of flood and debris-flow risk;
- analysis of how better risk information changes decisions to close a track or protect it;
- vulnerability and damage functions, with a classification of the possible damage to rail infrastructure.
Reinhard Mechler argued for multi-criteria analysis beyond cost-benefit analysis in the fourth Letter from Sendai, and the railway case was one place where the project applied it. The other ENHANCE cases are in the case-study atlas.