This session explored recent experiences with two major challenges to transport system operations: natural disasters, such as earthquakes and volcanoes, and manmade technological innovations, such as larger ships calling at ports. These challenges have the potential to disrupt transport systems and the lives of local residents and global residents alike. The session considered how the government and the private sector can best respond following major natural disasters as well as strategies for ensuring transport systems are more resilient to future natural disasters and technological innovations.
Natural disasters in New Zealand, Chile, Iceland and Japan in recent years have very prominently disrupted transport systems and lives on a local and global scale. The first hand experiences of the speakers demonstrated the difficulty of the critical immediate responses following these disasters when the basic capabilities of the transport system are severely reduced. While initial responses focus on emergency relief, speakers advised to also focus on restoring ‘normality’ to transport and people’s lives as soon as possible to ensure a strong social and economic recovery.
When planning for the next transport disruption there are often difficult cost trade-offs to be made, but speakers identified several opportunities to improve future resilience at relatively low cost. With climate change potentially increasing the frequency and severity of some natural disasters, and the volume of trade and travel increasing, a case can be made for investing in some degree of network redundancy (e.g. back up systems or network links). However, these investments should be carefully assessed as responding to the most vulnerable and important components of the transport system. This will depend very much on the local context of risk, geography and the nature of the economy.
Lower cost opportunities for improving resilience included clear and appropriate action plans (supported by simulations or ‘drills’) with clear communication systems and legal frameworks in place. In the case of air traffic disrupted by volcanic ash, building the scientific knowledge about ash levels for safe operation and then building appropriate monitoring systems will support future decision-making during such disruptions. Such measures aim to reduce the duration and severity of the impacts on transport users and economies generally. Another potential opportunity for increasing resilience of transport systems was the sharing of fleet among airline alliance partners, however, this was considered to not be feasible in the short term in most markets due to a lack of interoperability and potential market access limitations.
Increases in demand and supply of some transport services are putting pressure on the resilience of supply chains. For instance, in aviation many major airports are operating close to capacity, meaning that even minor disruptions can ripple through to a large number of passengers and freight users very rapidly. In the sea freight sector, the rapid increase in the size of ships, and the scale of port facilities required to accommodate them, is putting increasing pressure on land-side transport networks. Larger peaks in demand from these large ships can negatively affect the reliability of adjoining rail and road networks if these are not sufficiently adapted to the evolving freight task. Building transport resilience for these freight supply chains requires careful strategic planning for the appropriate number, scale, location and supporting land-side infrastructure for ports in a city, country or region. This kind of planning can raise difficult decisions about port relocations or closures that can run counter to political aspirations for these assets.
The threat of climate change means that transport needs to play a central role in reducing its environmental impacts, but at the same time, the session concluded that transport systems need to improve resilience to these and other impacts. The high cost of supply chain disruptions in the last decade suggests that the trade-off between efficiency and redundancy needs to be recalibrated in favour of risk mitigation and resilience. Getting this trade-off right is of critical importance to social and economic development for local, national and global communities. The session heard from a number of speakers who suggested that this message is being heeded and turned into positive actions and policy to improve resilience to future disruptions.
(Provision summary)
