Stormwater and roads - dimensioning for climate change

The transport infrastructure is a vital part of the society, with high capital investments, proper management and design of this system is therefore very important. Climate changes will increase the frequency of extreme precipitation events, floods and sn ow melt periods experienced by the infrastructure. This project will couple the state of the art global climatic models with historic data, local hydrology models, and geology to create a model that can evaluate the run-off situations near roads and the a pplicability of current road design standards for different scenarios. The hydrology model selection will be based on a literature survey of the available models and it will be especially important to incorporate the capability to handle snow on rain eve nts and multiple melt periods over a season into the model. A risk analysis tool, like WATER (Watershed Assessment Tool for Environmental Risk) simulation tool with possible modifications for Norwegian conditions, will be used to develop an environmental risk map of the transport infrastructure with respect to erosion. Coupling the environmental risk map, the hydrologic model, and a stochastic simulation methodology a vulnerability map of the transport infrastructure to extreme run-off situations can be created. These results will then be used to create guidelines for road construction with respect to run-off and drainage that can account for changes in climate. A post-doc will be employed for the project and will work together with established researc h scientist within the field of urban runoff, hydrogeology and surface water treatment systems, both nationally, Sweden and the USA. This will create an internationally strong team that can take advantage of the individual strengths and knowledge exchange between the research centers.