Puertos del Estado has awarded the Fundación Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de Cantabria a preliminary climate risk assessment for the 46 ports of general interest, which will include the development and implementation of a specific tool.
The results obtained will contribute to designing the climate change adaptation plans for the ports based on homogeneous data sources and methodology, as well as to the development of the future Port Climate Change Observatory. The planned developments will be coordinated at all times through a specific group with the port authorities. The contract amount is 650,000 euros.
Among the objectives pursued are ensuring methodological coherence both internally, at the port system level, and externally, with respect to other institutions, particularly the Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Riesgo Demográfico (MITERD) in the case of coastal risk analyses, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself, and facilitating the monitoring and updating of climate risks within the framework of the Business Plans with the Port Authorities.
This preliminary assessment will provide an initial characterization of the risk (high-medium-low) and identify those ports where it is a priority to conduct higher-resolution analyses by each Port Authority. It will also allow for an initial estimation of adaptation measures and costs.
Therefore, this work promoted by Puertos del Estado for the entire port system is a decisive step within the strategy outlined in the Strategic Framework for addressing climate change adaptation, which adds to the significant contribution and investment effort that the ports have been making in terms of mitigation, where the deployment of OPS, the electrical connection to docked ships that allows auxiliary engines to be shut down reducing emissions, stands out.
This work falls within the objectives of the Spanish Government’s second National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change 2021-2030. This Plan assigns the Port System of general interest the incorporation, in decision-making, of the systematic assessment of the climate risks affecting critical state infrastructure such as ports. In this way, Puertos del Estado will contribute to providing a state-wide vision of climate risks, allowing the identification of those ports at greatest risk and where it is therefore a priority to act.
Puertos del Estado makes its Operational Oceanography service available for this work, as a starting point, consolidated over the last 30 years and internationally leading, which measures, analyzes, and predicts the state of the sea (waves, sea level, currents, etc.).
Data are obtained through advanced numerical prediction systems and information received from its ocean-meteorological parameter measurement networks: the offshore buoy network (or deep-water buoys) composed of 15 measurement positions, the coastal buoy network with 13 measurement positions, the tide gauge network, with 41 sea level and wave stations along the entire Spanish coast, and a high-frequency radar network for measuring surface currents, which has 9 stations with shared ownership and management with other institutions.
The networks transmit all information in real time to Puertos del Estado, which is responsible for the management, processing, and distribution of this data.
