News

Find out about HIRAM, a tool to understand climate change impacts on transport

Posted on 27/05/15 by Chrysostomos Meli

HIRAM – for Highways Infrastructure Resilience Assessment Modelling– was developed in South West England with the South West Highways Alliance,  Climate UK, Climate Ready, Wilson Pym and May and the Met Office.

It has drawn praise from the Transport Resilience review, which stated: “The South West Local Transport Adaptation Task & Finish Group has developed a methodology which concludes with the stages of prioritising adaptive actions to build resilience and embedding these within the Highway Asset Management Plan.” The review panel was impressed by the methodology, believing it should be further developed and then disseminated so it can be used more widely.

It is indeed intended to roll the tool out nationally, which will benefit London. Also, it will be showcased in London at the Future Highways Conference, taking place at the Oval on 11 June 2015.

HIRAM is a network based strategic tool to analyse risks and the socio economic impacts of those risks. It is fully web and map based. The project started in 2014, essentially as a piece of work to help the South West – comprising 15 authorities who have worked in partnership – to address the resilience challenges presented by the changing climate.

The tool aims to better understand the potential impacts of climate change on the network, to improve resilience, address resilience as a network based approach and to join things up on a network based resilience level and to help strengthen the approach to building business cases to fund resilience enhancements.

Find out more about HIRAM here.