Abstract Manager

Many remote and northern communities do not have access to all-weather transportation networks, and rely on Canada’s 8,000+ km of winter road system for their annual supply of essential goods, including food, medicine, fuel and construction materials. Winter roads are possible only when the ground and waterways are sufficiently frozen to safely support vehicle traffic. Canada has one of the longest winter road networks in the world, providing vital linkages for remote communities in the Northwest Territories, and the provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Since winter roads are highly dependent on climate factors, such as air temperature and snow, it is one of the most vulnerable modes of transportation in light of increasingly warmer and unpredictable winters. This is the third phase of National Research Council of Canada’s multi-year research to develop a data-driven framework to systematically review, assess, and quantify the vulnerability of Canada’s winter road network to climate change. This framework is based on correlating historical opening and closing dates of winter roads in the last decade with freezing index as a proxy for winter severity. This approach indirectly considers how the effect of non-weather parameters such as the availability of proper construction equipment and techniques may influence the length of operating seasons. During this phase of the research, a tool has been developed to automate climate impact analysis for the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as well as integrate the latest climate models to forecast the length of operating seasons under various future climate scenarios. This presentation will discuss the tool, data, analytical methods, and present the results of the analysis.