Prioritizing climate adaptation interventions for road infrastructure

Abstract

Amid escalating climate risks and a widening adaptation finance gap, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), prioritizing adaptation measures for road infrastructure is essential for building sufficient resilience through both public and private adaptation financing. Despite the urgency of the issue, adaptation finance for infrastructure is often hampered by a lengthy and complex decision-making process that involves conflicting stakeholder interests. Existing taxonomies and benchmarks for adaptation finance typically focus on identifying optimal engineering solutions, often overlooking the numerous factors that influence these implementation decisions. To address this gap, this study develops an approach to understand stakeholders’ and decision makers’ preferences for road infrastructure adaptation measures using empirical evidence based on a global survey of 72 out of 129 respondents from industry, academia, and government. Multi-criteria decision analysis is applied using the Best-Worst Method (BWM) and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). Four relative importance criteria are assessed, namely, disaster risk reduction, maladaptation risk, adverse societal impact, and project cost, and rank 11 widely-adopted adaptation measures targeting intense precipitation and extreme heat. Results show preventive, cost-effective, and sustainable options, such as improved drainage systems, vegetation plans, and monitoring systems, are consistently favored over capital-intensive structural solutions like alternative road construction and road reallocation. Overall, the findings demonstrate a systematic approach that incorporates diverse stakeholder perspectives into road adaptation planning to enhance the transparency, legitimacy, and implementability of selected adaptation measures.