The costs of extreme weather for the European transport system: EWENT project D4

Extreme weather causes damages to the transport system worth billions of euros annually at the European level. This report presents results of a first attempt to have the full picture of various impacts across transport modes and with Europe-wide coverage as a result of the EWENT project. These impacts are mainly created by accident costs and delays and cancellations as a result of the extreme weather. The single biggest contributor is the road transport, where accidents due to bad weather result to large number of fatalities and injuries. Similarly, in aviation the cancellations and delays contribute to large costs both to travellers as well as operators. There are several uncertainties involved in the calculations provided, which are results of poor data availability and assumptions made regarding the share of weather-related accidents in total accidents. However, based on the results it is clear that extreme weather events do create of variety of negative impacts, for which no solutions exist at present. The study has also analysed the trends in impacts between present and 2040 and 2070. Results show that the overall impact will be reduced by one-third compared to current situation, but this is mainly due to the fact that accidents in roads will decline due to vehicle technologies. Additional decline will be achieved through reduction in number of days with bad weather.