Climate Resilience and Adaptation for Rural Roads (FutureLearn)

Planners, designers and managers of rural road infrastructures must keep up-to-date with the nature of these changes. This includes understanding the likelihood of occurrence, as well as the implications on the financing, design, and maintenance of these roads in the future.
On this course, you’ll explore these factors and consider how new and existing infrastructure can be planned, designed, upgraded, maintained and adapted to become more climate-resilient.

What topics will you cover?

• Climate related issues which might affect the design, construction and maintenance of low volume rural roads.
• The Impact on the socio-economic situation of those reliant on low volume rural roads.
• How the changing climate affects the impact of the design.
• How the design, construction and maintenance of low volume rural roads can be modified to increase their climate resilience.

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Explore research from the Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP) on rural roads.
• Identify the anthropogenic causes of Climate change and global warming and have a basic understanding of the science that underpins climate change.
• Assess how confidently climate change tools can be used to predict the most likely regional climate change events and the anticipated impact on rural roads.
• Develop a range of maintenance and rehabilitation strategies and approaches to adapt the rural road network to climate change events and mitigate against damage and loss of function.
• Explain effectively (to stakeholders and national strategic transport planners) the importance of appropriate planning for Climate change and adoption of climate adaptation procedures.