Expected Impact

 Actions will contribute to substantial improvement of smooth continuity of mobility of people and freight even in case of serious disruptions due to natural or man-made circumstances.

“Better Preparedness, More Efficient and Faster Reaction” is a key principle of the PANOPTIS vision.

PANOPTIS will enfornce this principle at each level individually and as whole to the entire process of mobility. Through the Early Warning Systems and fore/now-casting weather predictions, PANOPTIS will leverage and be linked with existing infrastructures. The system developed will be real-time publically available (status and warnings), providing crucial information to stakeholders before and during the crisis. The system will be adjustable to the changes and progress of the crisis based on the now casting weather data which in combination with the use of adaptive models and data analytics will lead to fast decision making and strategy adaptation. Holistic Resilience Assesment Platform will be used to assess the impact of the various hazards to the transportation network and through its add-on to traffic simulators, we aim to estimate the impact on the transportation provided service and analyse possible re-traffic strategies in both planning and response phases. This way, PANOPTIS will be a valuable tool to improve smooth continuity of people and freight mobility in case of a severe event due to natural or man-made circumstances.

Major progress will be made regarding individual mode components’ resilience to damage due to extreme weather conditions, including reduction of maintenance and retrofitting needs.

PANOPTIS significantly contributes to the better understanding of disaster risks from climate and weather extremes towards improved prevention, mitigation and preparedness measures. In particular, PANOPTIS takes action in anticipation of events, “Build Back Better”38 in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction, ensuring that capacities are in place for effective response and recovery at all levels and at all scales. The tools and techniques provided by PANOPTIS are very relevant for mitigating the impact of weather conditions on the infrastructure wearing out. For RIs, weather stresses represent 30% to 50% of current road maintenance costs in Europe (8 to 13 billon €/year). About 10% of these costs (~0.9 billion €/year) are associated with extreme weather events, in which extreme heavy rainfalls and floods events represent the first contribution2. By promoting proactive, condition-based maintenance only for tunnels, we expect to eliminate the need for emergency repairs that are inelastic in terms of timing and require a lot of time to perform and thus result in service interruptions. 

This will lead to an increased time capacity for freight and passengers at lower cost than providing additional tunnels (that cost about 150 million €/Km). At the same time, we will achieve to replace manual work and ensure best use of scarce tunnel inspectors, improve their working conditions, increase the productivity by min. 20% and reduce traffic congestion and the resulting noise, pollution and economic consequences. The repair costs may exceed initial construction costs for bridges in Europe and North America, while traffic delay costs are 15 to 40% of such construction costs. Visual inspections cannot be eliminated and scarce inspection resources cannot be saved because 10% of the time there is something wrong that needs to be fixed, as indicated from several studies (e.g., FHWA). There exist about 1,5 million bridges in the Trans-European Networks and the primary and secondary road (and rail) networks in the EU. If the proposed PANOPTIS integrated package extends the life of the bridge by 10 years, the average replacement cost equals 0.5 million € and the cost of capital is 6%, this will result in a net present value of savings of 280,000 € per bridge. Significant savings are expected from redistribution of regular maintenance costs in a 10 years longer life cycle of bridge. Furthermore, increased residual lifetime of existing bridges will increase roadway transportation capacity.

 A high level of resilience of the transport infrastucture is an essentia contribution to sustainable development and impact on and adaptation to CC conditions. 

PANOPTIS regards the sequence required to respond to the Climate Change challenge in particular and to build the resilience of RI systems. A first step would involve enhancing the understanding and technical knowledge among policymakers, transport planners, insurance, re-insurance and RI managers of Climate Change impacts on Road Infrastructures (RI), services and operations. Our proposed Decision Support System (DSS) aims to strengthen the capacity of all the relevant stakeholders to make informed decisions and take effective and appropriate climate-policy response and adaptation measures (mostly relevant to the WP6). Conducting risk assessments for critical Road Inffrastructure and facilities will be crucial to ensure that adaptation measures adopted are tailored to reflect the local conditions. To be more effective, enhancing adaptive capacity requires that actions be integrated with other policies such as disaster preparedness, land-use planning, environmental conservation, road-planning and national plans for sustainable development, which is why PANOPTIS approach try to embrace these aspects under its holistic view.