What is the WRCCA Strategy?
The Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation (WRCCA) Strategy is designed to help Network Rail achieve its vision of ‘Putting passengers first’. The Strategy will achieve this by ensuring that we have ‘A railway that is safe and more resilient to the effects of weather, now and in the future’.
The Strategy will improve our understanding of the impacts of weather on our assets today and how they will change in the future. It will embed the consideration of these impacts into our daily activities making weather resilience and climate change adaptation considerations business as usual.
Successful implementation will mean that: our assets will be better able to withstand the impact of current and future weather events, and able to recover more rapidly when they occur. This will lead to: improved safety and performance under adverse and extreme weather conditions; reduced costs due to compensation and repairs; and, enhance our reputation as a reliable service.
How is the Strategy delivered?
Delivery of the Strategy focusses on the organisational processes such as governance, engagement and monitoring as well as four core pillars of activity as illustrated below.
All four pillars integrate to deliver the final outcome of the Strategy. Analysing the risks and costs of weather events and climate change will improve our understanding of them, allowing us to integrate their considerations into business as usual. It will also enable better streamlining of operational weather management, and proactive investment. This will make WRCCA consideration business as usual.
Although STE will steer the implementation of the Strategy, achieving its outcomes will require collaboration across Network Rail, and beyond. This will include the teams involved in the design, construction, maintenance and operation of our assets, and external bodies such as ORR, DfT, Defra, Environment Agency, and Transport for London, Highways England, utilities etc.
A key part of delivering the Strategy will be the implementation of the updated Route Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation Plans. Our Engineering Asset Disciplines (e.g. Track, Drainage, Signalling etc) are developing WRCCA strategies and action plans which will enable them to update associated standards and procedures to ensure they consider climate change.
Principles
Our Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation Policy outlines the key principles we are embedding within the way we do business including:
- Incorporate consideration of how climate change might amplify risks into analysis and decision-making processes throughout the business.
- Adapt at construction and at asset renewal in order to provide resilience in the most cost-effective manner
- Replacing like for better rather than like for like, with consideration of the whole life cost and the best strategic approach for managing the railway.
- Collaboration across the rail industry, government and other stakeholders to improve our understanding and management of weather and climate risks.
The full text of the Strategy is attached in the side-bar of this page. Our WRCCA Policy outlines the core principles for implementing the WRCCA strategy.
Key contacts:
For general enquiries, or Route contact details, please email EnvironmentandSustainability@networkrail.co.uk.
For specific enquiries, please click on the relevant Central contact below.
