Europe has experienced an inconceivable heat wave beyond the Pyrenees until very recently and the consequences have been dire. France attributes heat as the main cause of more than 1,000 deaths and thermal blankets have been seen on windows to reflect the sun’s rays and reduce the temperature in houses that lack air conditioning.
The consequences today have been devastating in much of Europe. Roads that melt and trams that drag the materials that stick their tracks to the ground. Firefighters who water the bridges so that the steel does not fracture. Trains canceled because the temperature was too high inside.
The situation has been so dramatic that more than half of Europe is already looking south. Portugal, Spain and Italy are now the benchmarks when it comes to building new infrastructures, aware north of our borders that these episodes of extreme heat will be more and more recurrent.
But Spain doesn’t have it that easy either. Although we have obvious experience in dealing with extreme heat when building our infrastructure, our country also has to remain alert to other episodes of climate change.
Although in recent days the discourse has become popular on social networks that Spain has many lessons to teach northern Europe, the truth is that we have our own problems.
“We share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe,” warns César Franco, president of the General Council of Industrial Engineers and director of the master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at the UAX.
Our own challenges
While the videos accumulated, the morality lessons piled up on social networks in southern Europe. If you have entered spaces like
Or that their infrastructures do not have expansion joints.
“It is an inaccurate statement. Joints exist and are essential in bridges, viaducts and concrete structures throughout Europe”, assures César Franco who points out that, in addition, “the use of the Jointless Track (continuous welded rail) is an international standard” and that it is also used in Spain.
“The difference is in the calculations. In central and northern Europe, resistance to extreme cold, frost, freeze-thaw cycles and the use of melting salts have historically been prioritized. Now facing prolonged heat waves with records typical of Mediterranean latitudes, the materials and neutralization temperatures of their pathways are subjected to compression stresses outside their historical design ranges,” explains the president of the Council of Industrial Engineers.
The question, therefore, is not not knowing how to build an infrastructure, the question is what climatological effects they face. “Today, climate design is no longer limited to the asphalt-steel binomial. The real challenge is the concurrent risk. In addition to the heat, Spain must face episodes of torrential rain, DANA, storms, floods and associated geotechnical phenomena. This forces engineering to focus on general geotechnical stability: the behavior of the slopes, the capacity of drainage works to avoid scours on bridges, and the monitoring of clearings to prevent landslides that interrupt circulation,” explains Franco about our country.
That is to say, while Europe now has problems with extreme summer heat, Spain must be careful with cycles of strong and recurring rain, something for which, as we confirmed just a few months ago, we are not prepared. “We have very robust regulatory and technical know-how in high temperature scenarios, but we share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe,” the General Council of Industrial Engineers emphasizes.
And the temperature can dilate the tracks of a train until causing the so-called “lateral buckling”. It is not, they explain to us, a structural failure, it is really “a collapse due to elastic instability of the entire system (track-fastening-sleeper-ballast).” The asphalt binder can also lose this stability, which “if it exceeds its softening temperature, it loses viscosity. The mixture loses rigidity and resistance to deformation, and under heavy traffic ruts, undulations or exudations (sticky surfaces) may appear,” explains César Franco.
We do not have these problems in Spain because we are adapted to them, but the General Council of Industrial Engineers warns: “We have very robust regulatory and technical know-how in high temperature scenarios, but we share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe. Our network faces challenges linked to the aging of assets and the need to intensify preventive conservation. Spain’s advantage is the experience in the behavior of materials under heat; the common European challenge is the financing and speed of adaptation of existing networks to the new climatic normality”.
And Spain and Europe face the same problem. Both have to find ways to make their infrastructure suitable during extreme weather events for which they were not designed. The European Union, César Franco reminds us, “requires that the main networks be fully operational and resilient against natural risks with horizons to 2030, 2040 and 2050” but the problem is that, everything indicates, we are not moving fast enough.
Photo | Julian Hochgesang and General Council of Industrial Engineers
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