Adapting to climate change: let's get rolling

It's a fact: climate hazards are set to intensify in the coming years. Since 2015, heatwaves have become more significant (remember those 46°C in 2019) and could double by 2050. Heavy precipitation has increased by 20% over the past 20 years, leading to higher and more frequent flooding. Since 1990, the frequency of storms impacting infrastructure has risen by 30%. Because that's the whole point: the weather impacts our traffic.

Heat that expands rails, disrupts electronic systems, makes working conditions difficult in maintenance workshops and on-board journeys for passengers and conductors, storms that topple trees or damage bridges, floods that... well: we won't draw you a picture. Climatic hazards are going to make life difficult for train travel. So we're preparing for them to maintain the safety, punctuality, reliability and comfort of our services. But how can we?

The challenge remains to prevent incidents, from potential to probable. To this end, we are carrying out vulnerability studies (see box below) at 3 technical centers to identify the impact of climate change on our business, we are raising awareness among management teams to facilitate the deployment of best practices, we have structured 2 plans (Heatwaves and Floods: the 2 greatest risks for our business), we are involved in international rail research programs to imagine, with several players, innovative and effective solutions... More pragmatically, this has already enabled us to build shades to protect our agents outdoors, share work instructions in the event of a heatwave, map the most at-risk flood zones to contain impacts, cover our trains with an anti-UV coating...