UNECE Expert Group on climate change impacts on international transport infrastructure

At its seventy-third session, in March 2011, the Inland Transport Committee, noting the results of the joint UNECE-UNCTAD workshop, agreed to establish a Group of Experts on climate change impacts and adaptation for international transport networks and to adopt its terms of reference. The UNECE Executive Committee at its forty-first meeting, in May 2011, approved the establishment of such an expert group. The Group of Experts started its work with an International Conference, held in 2011, of which the background paper and presentations are available at this website. The report of the Group of experts, published in 2013 is also available (ECE/TRANS/238). Subsequently, the Group of Experts has been requested to assist and report by 2017 in: 

(a) Identify and establish, if possible, inventories of transport networks in the ECE region which are vulnerable to climate change impacts, if possible in a geographic information system (GIS) environment; 

(b) Use/develop models, methodologies, tools and good practices to address potential extreme hazards (e.g. high temperatures and floods) to selected inland transport infrastructure in the ECE region under different scenarios of climate change; 

(c) Identification and analysis of case studies on the potential economic, social, and environmental consequences of the climate change impacts and provide a cost/benefit analysis of the adaptation options.