Climate change is challenging the world with more extreme weather events. As we keep altering the environment and its fragile equilibrium we will face heavier rainfalls, storms and fires. These events contribute to damage the human activities that directly rely on the environment, like agriculture. Additionally, energy transport and communication infrastructures are at serious risk creating large negative economic impacts.
Weather forecasts play an important role in the planning of many human activities, but as weather events become more unpredictable it is of increasing importance to have better tools to be ready in case of such catastrophes.
It is in this scenario that the RAIN (Risk Analysis of Infrastructure Networks) project has born, with the help of European funds. The project has expertise in climatology, operational analysis, transportation economics, risk analysis and mitigation, emergency planning, transportation engineering as well as engineering design and assessment. It aims at providing more robust and reliable informations about weather events, especially for infrastructure operators. The results of the project will help decision making in the long term, both improving new infrastructure development as well as protecting existing infrastructure against climate change.
The RAIN team use data from official weather records to analyse events and the associated weather forecasts, with the scope to develop more accurate weather forecasts.
The project has three main objectives:
Identification of extreme weather events to be analysed by RAIN, by defining appropriate intensity thresholds and by taking into account regional differences in vulnerability and climate.
Assessment of the present state-of-the-art forecast systems for extreme weather and their characteristics, to address and estimate their predictive skill.
Assessment of the frequency of weather hazards throughout Europe for both the present and future climate
Climate is changing and we have scarse information about how really it will evolve. We need more accurate instruments to prevent and minimise the impact of the extreme events to which we will be surely expose in the coming years. This project will to create new operational response strategies that we desperately need.
For more information have a look at www.rain-project.eu
