How do you design roads so they can stand up to heavier rains, more floods and higher temperatures? Those questions are in the process of being answered by COWI as part of a World Bank project focusing on the effects of climate change on Africa’s infrastructure.

“Most studies have concentrated on the consequences on industry and agriculture, but now we’re moving further down the chain and looking into what else we need to be prepared for,” says COWI Senior Project Manager Karsten Sten Pedersen.

Two countries

“This is the first small step towards
understanding what kind of an impact climate change is having on infrastructure, and what are the costs and benefits of various responses.”

The project looks at the effects of climate change on Mozambique and Ethiopia, two countries with differing climate, geography and risks: Mozambique’s long coastlines make it vulnerable to flooding, while Ethiopia is an inland country with desert, mountain and lowland environments.

Limited resources

COWI will compile UN information to put together a forecast for the climate in the two countries in the year 2050. It will then compare that outlook with the one drawn by local experts and use combined portrait to study the magnitude of the impact of climate change on the roads in various areas.

“With the limited resources that are out there, we hope the study will serve as indicator of where the greatest return on investment is in terms of how many people it affects – for example, if there are multiple accidents a day on a given road,” says Pedersen.