Airports should develop resilience strategy, collaborate with insurers to mitigate climate risks: Study

New Delhi: Airports should conduct periodic vulnerability assessments and develop a resilience strategy as well as collaborate with insurers to mitigate climate risk, according to a study. The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) initiated the global study on the disaster resilience of airports and various airports were surveyed.

'Airports should conduct periodic vulnerability assessments'

Airports that conduct periodic vulnerability assessments are anticipating a lower impact on their organisation as compared to airports without a periodic assessment practice, it said, adding that airports should engage local and regional stakeholders for increasing airport resilience practices.
"Airports should conduct periodic vulnerability assessments and develop a resilience strategy," the study said.

Further, it noted that airports should move towards a more proactive approach rather than reactive towards hazard management and resilience planning. "Airports and insurers should collaborate to mitigate climate risk, this will be mutually beneficial."

25 airport stakeholders from Indian airports participated in the study

The report is based on an online survey of airports across regions like Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East, and North America. A total of 111 airports gave their responses and the highest number of respondent airports were from the Indian subcontinent. As many as 25 airport stakeholders from Indian airports participated in the study. For the study, Netherlands Airports Consultants, a company of Royal HaskoningDHV (NACO), did year-long research on behalf of CDRI.

"Across regions, airports expect extreme storms and winds, extreme precipitation, and third-party systems failures to result in partial infrastructural restrictions, flight delays, and indirect economic loss to airport partners. Each region displays a different ability to recover from climate and natural hazards. Notably, North America displays a slower ability to fully recover from extreme icing conditions, extreme storms and winds and geological hazards compared to Asia/Pacific and Europe," it noted.

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