Climate Ready

Increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing our planet to warm. As our planet warms, other elements of our climate system change, for example changes to patterns of rainfall.

In Scotland, this change is already happening. It’s warmer than it once was, rainfall patterns have changed, and certain weather extremes are occurring more frequently and are often more severe. We know these changes will intensify in the decades ahead.

This change in our climate has an impact on our railway, for example, more frequent disruption caused by heavy rainfall and associated flooding, or more frequent and record-breaking hot days impacting our railway infrastructure.

We are responding to this change in climate by working to make our railway ‘climate ready’. This means working hard to make our railway infrastructure more robust and resilient against these changes in climate.

It also means improving our knowledge and understanding of how climate change will impact our railway and using new insights gained to inform the decisions we make on the future resilience of our railway.

Over the next five years, our objective is to increase our adaptation capability maturity score from 2.5 to 4 as measured by the Rail Safety and Standards Board adaptation capability assessment tool. To achieve this, we are working towards delivering four key outcomes in this space:

1. The decisions we make are based on a maturing understanding of climate-related risk.
2. A long-term climate adaptation and resilience strategy increasingly guides investment.
3. Our assets are made increasingly resilient to acute weather events, as well as longer-term changes in climate.
4. Our ‘climate ready journey’ is underpinned by a maturing foundation of risk, assurance, competence, and data insights.

To find out more about our approach to preparing our railway and organisation for the changing climate you can download our Climate Ready Plan.