Climate change on structural resilience of core seaport infrastructure

Major port infrastructure authorities need to make strategic decisions in advance of tipping points being reached to avoid 'catastrophic failure of essential physical assets'. Whilst simulation techniques are commonly used to estimate future degradation and service of physical infrastructure according to their sensitivity to various environmental parameters (such as depth of high tide, temperature, wetting and drying cycles etc), there has been no consideration of the altered levels of vulnerability and exposure that will result from a changing climate. This knowledge deficiency also applies to life cycle modelling which provides an important evidence base for divisions affecting the protection and maintenance of different forms of seaport infrastructures. This project explores the effects of climate change on structural resilience of seaports. Main activities comprise of three components: (a) Mapping and characterising the vulnerability of different port infrastructure according to a system hierarchy; (b) undertaking detailed predictive modelling of the deterioration of key infrastructure (software models plus 3D visualisation capacity to allow strategic targeting of hot spot); (c) developing resilience metrics and development of composite resilience indices.