HERCULES — towards geoHazards rEsilient infRastruCtUre under changing cLimatES

Results in brief

towards geoHazards rEsilient infRastruCtUre under changing cLimatES

Climate change-induced geohazards are increasing, endangering buildings and infrastructure investments. Damage from climate extremes to critical infrastructure in the transport, energy, industrial and social sector totals €3.4b/year in Europe, which could be six times this value by mid-century and more than 10 times this value by 2100. Moreover, the expected annual exposure to multiple hazards will increase much more sharply than for single hazards. A systems approach is needed to promote better-informed decision-making. This requires a strategy integrating land-use planning, national infrastructure priorities, building design, sustainable natural resource management and effective emergency planning. The aim of HERCULES is a step-change in our predictive capabilities and assessment of climate-induced geohazard risks and to use this understanding to help engineer and fund 21st-century resilient infrastructure. This will result in reduced damage to buildings and infrastructure and the associated disruption to economic activities, and most importantly reduced loss of life. Also, the research will produce a step-change in the way insurers operate in calculating risk: current calculation models assume that risks are incalculable. However, climate change-induced geohazards have a precise physical cause. The current inability to include physicomechanical principles in the calculation of risks has led the insurance industry to rely on black-box risk assessment models, which are uneconomical and do not properly reflect how risky a natural hazard is in comparison with other risks. This will lead to fairer insurance premiums and reduce the use of exclusion clauses, sub-limits, and coverage ceilings by insurers. Through the first 24 months, through staff exchange, knowledge sharing and training, HERCULES is moving towards a better understanding of the physicomechanical causes of climate-induced geohazards, which is pivotal to establishing causal links between hazards and potential losses.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

HERCULES brings together a multidisciplinary team crossing boundaries within technology, systems thinking and society to develop a step change in the understanding and monitoring capabilities of geohazards and in turn produce ground breaking new methods to boost the resilience of current infrastructure under changing climates. The programme will undertake fundamental research to ascertain the pathways and grow our capacity to assess and predict risks due to geohazards. The proposed study will employ a range of novel research approaches across multiple scales, from the macro-scale through to the micro scale including the integration of Earth Observation techniques, laboratory investigation and by investigating the ground behaviour at the scale of soil particles experimentally using tomography and numerical techniques such as the Discrete Element Method. Our approach is unique in that the design and implementation of the technology is informed not only through the combination of laboratory and field studies, data interpretation and numerical simulations, but also coproduced through consultation with the local community. We will use crowdsourced geographic information with real-time environmental data and models to provide a decision-making framework to be adapted to local needs for the monitoring and early-warning of geozahards to improve urban resilience. The goals of the project are to: i) exchange knowledge in a multidisciplinary environment between academia and industry; ii) develop new insights, approaches and technologies that support the needs of end-users to make both the built environment and infrastructure more resilient to the increasing threat of natural hazards due to the effect of a more variable climate; iii) train Early Stage Researches (ESRs) during their secondments between Institutions who will form the next generation of researchers leading academic and industrial technological developments in this field.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK · COVENTRYCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
ACCADEMIA EUROPEA DI BOLZANO · BolzanoItaly
ARUP ITALIA SRL · MilanItaly
COFFEY GEOTECHNICS LIMITED · READINGUnited Kingdom
CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE · RomaItaly
DARES TECHNOLOGY SL · CASTELLDEFELS BARCELONASpain
ECOLE NATIONALE DES PONTS ET CHAUSSEES · Marne La Vallee Cedex 2France
ITASCA CONSULTANTS GMBH · GelsenkirchenGermany
NAZARBAYEV UNIVERSITY · AstanaKazakhstan
RHEINISCH-WESTFAELISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN · AachenGermany
SARMAP SA · CaslanoSwitzerland
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND · AucklandNew Zealand
UNIVERSIDAD MAYOR DE SAN SIMON · CochabambaBolivia
UNIVERSITAET FUER BODENKULTUR WIEN · WienAustria
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE · Newcastle Upon TyneUnited Kingdom
University of Newcastle · CallaghanAustralia
Zhejiang University · HANGZHOUChina

HERCULES · towards geoHazards rEsilient infRastruCtUre under changing cLimatES

Results in brief

towards geoHazards rEsilient infRastruCtUre under changing cLimatES

Project objective

Participants

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