Future of Airports | How is climate change affecting infrastructure planning?

Airports around the world are currently restricted in terms of operation as a result of lockdowns to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. No one is yet clear about the long term impact this will have on travel patterns. To put the impact into context, London Heathrow handled 22.1M passenger in 2020, compared with 80.9M in 2019. And while passenger flights were affected by the pandemic, cargo volumes passing through Heathrow fell by 28% last year.

London City Airport chief development officer Peter Adams has predicted it will take his airport five years to return to 2019 passenger numbers, while others expect recovery to take much longer. Whatever the true timeframe, all airports will have to address the impact of climate change during that period – and beyond.

The climate crisis is already shaping the future of airports when it comes to expansion plans with court battles and considerable debate preceding approval of projects at Heathrow and Southampton Airport. 

Leeds expansion plans on hold

Expansion plans for Leeds Bradford Airport were recently approved by Leeds City Council only to be paused by housing, communities and local government secretary Robert Jenrick. He is concerned that the decision does not fit the government’s 2050 net zero commitments.

Expedition Engineering director Alistair Lenczner has suggested that the UK should follow France and Germany’s efforts to promote rail over short-haul flights. 

In France, politicians are considering legislation to end short-haul domestic flights where the same journey could be done by train in under two and a half hours. 

Meanwhile, the German Aviation Association (BDL) and rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) signed an agreement in April to improve connectivity between airports and railway stations and to offer faster rail connections between cities. This could lead to the discontinuation of some domestic flight routes.

“I applaud France and Germany for doing it and I think Britain needs to be thinking along the same lines,” Lenczner told NCE. “It’s the sort of thinking you need to respond seriously to the climate situation. But it needs concerted effort and coordinated thinking across sectors.”

All airports will have to address the impact of climate change

Much of the focus for climate change has been on expansion plans, but the climate crisis is also having a major impact on existing infrastructure. 

Reinsurance broker Willis Re estimates that insured losses and economic impact due to major natural disaster events in 2020 were US$78bn (£55bn). While this is significantly lower than the 2017 peak of US$143bn (£101.8bn), it is 17% higher than the 10 year average.

The intensity and return period of such disasters is expected to continue increasing as the effects of climate change take hold, so understanding and mitigating the risks will become increasingly important. 

Roads and railways can be re-routed but relocating a major airport is a much bigger challenge, and new research is focusing on improving the resilience of existing airports as well as building it into new airports.

A research project is set to be launched to consider the risks to airport infrastructure and how to mitigate them. It is being led by the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), and aims to bring together airport operators and investors from around the world to share best practice and knowledge.

The number of [natural] disasters, as well as the intensity of disasters is increasing

The CDRI is a coalition of national governments – including the UK – plus UN agencies, development banks and financial institutions. It also includes partners from governments, the private sector and academic institutions.

The report will be the CDRI’s first global project since it was launched by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi at the September 2019 United Nations (UN) Climate Action Summit. 

“The objective of the coalition is to ensure rapid development of resilient infrastructure so that we can better respond to the UN Sustainable Development Goal imperatives, as well as universal access to basic services to enable inclusivity and prosperity,” explains CDRI lead specialist – research Hem Dholakia.

“Something that we saw was that over time the number of [natural] disasters, as well as the intensity of disasters is increasing. We’ve been able to give advance warning to people to help them move to different places and save lives but very often we haven’t been able to save their homes, their fields, the roads, the bridges, the tunnels – all the other infrastructure that they need. 

“So the idea was really to focus on infrastructure and see how we can make it climate and disaster resilient.”

We want to understand the economic losses that disasters have had on airports and the financial implications

The CDRI’s airports study has just been launched following a conceptualisation stage last year involving two international consultations with experts from different countries including the United States, the UK, France, Germany and Australia, as well as representatives from international organisations such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the International Air Transport Association and aviation trade body Airports Council International.

“It was through these consultations that we recognised the need to focus on the disaster resilience of airport infrastructure,” he says.

According to Dholakia, a lot of work on airport disaster resilience has been looked at from the point of view of aviation disasters and climate change mitigation. 

“But very few have looked at how the nature of disasters is changing, the impact they are having on airport infrastructure, the disruptions that it causes and how we can really address those issues in a systematic and holistic framework,” he explains.

“The infrastructure focus is what makes this study unique.”

Pandemic impact

The effects of the pandemic and the focus on investing in infrastructure to stimulate recovery makes the focus on airports all the more important, according to Dholakia. 

“If you look at it from the perspective of governments, there is a lot of investment happening in infrastructure in a bid to stimulate economic growth, and climate related risks have the potential to disrupt all of that,” he adds.

With the concept sorted, the CDRI is now in the process of tendering the research programme. While the full report is expected to take several years to fully complete, Dholakia expects to be able to start sharing results within five to six months of the research getting underway.

“The research will be split into three phases,” says Dholakia.

The first phase, which is expected to take nine months, will involve a survey of 150 airports around the world. Dholakia says this will include talking to airport facility managers and airport operators to understand their perceptions of risk based on the different events that they have faced in the past and gain understanding of what mechanisms have been used to respond to these events.

Improving resilience

“We will be looking to understand what changes they feel should be brought in to improve resilience,” he adds. “That could include changes in standards or certification systems for airports, it could be changes in the overall design, the way risk informs airport planning or it could be changes in the standard operating procedures for airports.

“It could also include strategic decisions around expansion of the airport or thinking needed around building a new airport in that area. We want to tease out how airports are looking at this.” 

Essentially, this phase will look at what airport operators would do if the cost implications of those decisions were removed. Nonetheless, Dholakia stresses that finance is still an important component of the study. 

“In the second phase we want to pick 12 to 15 airports around the world and actually work with them very closely to help them develop detailed resilience plans,” he says.

These plans would include hazard mapping, resilience planning and design and business continuity plans. Dholakia says that this part will also look at investor attitudes to funding changes in the design of new airports that would increase resilience and reduce risk. 

“Along with that, we want to understand the economic losses that disasters have had on airports, and the financial implications,” he explains. 

This second phase is expected to last for 14 months.

Planning implications for new airports

The length of the third and final phase is unknown but Dholakia says that this element of the work will look at broader themes, such as the political decisions about when and where to develop a new airport and the long term planning implications of developing new airports. 

According to Dholakia, this phase will also consider how aviation should be thought about in the context of changing transport preferences and he points to the recent policy decisions in France and Germany
as examples.

The results of the research are expected to be shared through workshops and the technical media.

“We want to take the results to each of our member countries and have deeper conversations with them and see which of the recommendations might be of benefit and how as an organisation we can work with them to help implement some of these recommendations,” says Dholakia.

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