Climate change risk for Irish timber power pole networks

Hawchar, Lara; Stewart, Mark G.; Nolan, Paul; Sweeney, Fergus; Ryan, Paraic C.

Climate change risk for Irish timber power pole networks

Files

223.pdf(471.06 KB)

Published Version

Date

2019-05-26

Authors

Hawchar, Lara

Stewart, Mark G.

Nolan, Paul

Sweeney, Fergus

Ryan, Paraic C.

Publisher

Seoul National University

Published Version

10.22725/ICASP13.223

Abstract

The latest IPCC report states that warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and this warming may lead to increased risk of breakdown of infrastructure networks due to extreme weather. Before appropriate action can be taken for power infrastructure in this regard, we must first understand existing risk, and then try to predict potential climate related changes in risk. The work described in this paper examines both existing vulnerability, and potential future vulnerability, for a notional network of Irish timber power poles. These power pole networks represent important critical infrastructure assets, both nationally, and internationally. There are currently approximately two million timber power poles in service in Ireland, five million timber power poles in service in Australia, worth over $10 billion, and approximately 200 million treated power poles in service in the United States. The impacts of climate change on Irish power poles will be examined herein using a Monte-Carlo event-based sequential model, which incorporates structural reliability, deterioration, climatic effects and network maintenance. The hazards of interest are storm winds and timber decay - both of which may worsen due to a changing climate.

Keywords

Extreme weather , Power infrastructure , Irish timber power poles , Climate change , Monte-Carlo event-based sequential model

Citation

Hawchar, L., Stewart, M. G., Nolan, P., Sweeney, F. and Ryan, P. C. (2019) ‘Climate change risk for Irish timber power pole networks’, 13th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP13), Seoul, South Korea, 26-30 May, pp. 1212-1219. doi: 10.22725/ICASP13.223