Predicting and Alleviating Road Flooding for Climate Mitigation

摘要: Climate change is a global concern that is causing widespread disruptions to environmental, socioeconomic systems and human health. Recent studies have assessed the risks posed by extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and altered temperature and precipitation regimes to essential infrastructure systems. Damages to infrastructure are of particular concern for developing countries, where investment in energy, water, communication and transport infrastructure is a key strategy for meeting several UN sustainable development goals. For instance, estimated costs of road repair and maintenance across Africa under current climate change projections exceed $150 billion, diverting significant funding from initiatives for expansion and development. Thus, climate change will exacerbate existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities and threaten the success of crucial development schemes unless steps are taken to proactively mitigate these costs. Road networks are especially important to supporting socioeconomic development in the least developed countries, since they provide access to services like education and healthcare and enable overland trade flows that are integral to the growth of developing economies. Currently about 85% of the road network in Western Africa and 88% of that in south central Africa are comprised of unpaved roads [3], making them highly susceptible to damage from precipitation which accounts for 80% of their degradation [2]. The first step toward developing climate-resilient road infrastructure is to analyze the exposure to climatic pressures. The probability of roads being inundated is a plausible measure of climate …