Climate Resilient Ports: Measuring the Vulnerability of Container Terminals to Climate Change

The climate is changing, and large infrastructures face risks related to climate change. For new investments, a climate stress test is required. The most recent studies of the vulnerability of container terminals to climate change has been either qualitative, based on the subjective values from stakeholders, been focused on assessing the impact from a single weather event, or related to the effectiveness of a resilience measure. State of the art research to assess the vulnerability of container terminals to climate change is expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, since the models should face deep uncertainty related to climate change, it is questionable whether it is possible to validate any of the given scenarios. In such situations, exploratory modeling studies can be used to analyze the behavior of the system under a large set of scenarios. Also, it is not always desired to perform an in-depth study for every container terminal. Therefore, there is social demand for a more generic tool, which can be used for screening of container terminals. To screen for vulnerability of container terminals, an exploratory method should be developed, that can be used to estimate the operational impact of climate change for a given container terminal. The main question to be answered with such a tool is: “What is the effect of different climate scenarios on the operational performance of a container terminals?”.Technology, Policy and ManagementMulti Actor Systems / Policy AnalysisSystems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management (SEPAM