Climate Resilience Assessment Framework for Inland Ports

Abstract

Adapting to climate change is essential for inland ports to maintain their competitiveness on the freight transport market. A resilience framework supports the identification of potential threats and weak points in operations and business continuity plans Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop a resilience framework for inland ports to identify and assess hazards, key functions and infrastructure, and improve resilience measures. Key functions and infrastructure elements are revealed, and hazards are identified based on historical data and forecasts. Redundancy, vulnerability, recoverability, preparedness, and reactiveness were identified as resilience indicators. The proposed resilience framework has been applied to the Budapest Port in Hungary to demonstrate and validate the method. Results: It was found that the port is vulnerable to heavy wind, drought, and flood. Mitigation measures, such as covering loading bays, and applying anti-freeze agents and windbreakers, can reduce vulnerability. Measures can help to improve the resilience of the Budapest port. However, weak points outside of the port pose a greater risk, such as the unregulated Danube and the lack of support for temporal replacement of waterborne transport.