The National Museum of Natural Sciences is promoting a project to analyse infrastructures sensitive to climate change.

The National Museum of Natural Sciences, belonging to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has launched the Adaptapresa project “Regional information on climate change and floods for the adaptation of the design and safety analysis of sensitive infrastructures” with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation.

The recent impacts of climate change on hydrology show the need to advance in the methodologies that allow for the design and safety of sensitive infrastructures (dams, heritage buildings, bridges) in the context of climate change. This project is part of the studies of the impact of Climate Change on hydrology developed within the PIMA Adapta program.

In this project a holistic methodology is proposed based on three types of analysis and/or data: (1) Climate Model, (2) Distributed Hydrological Model, and (3) Paleohydrological Model and Past Environmental Changes. The calculations of the return periods of floods of interest in dam safety (1000 and 5000 years) obtained through climate projections show a high uncertainty, with increases of 180-340% (model 9) and decreases of 20-35% (model 7) with respect to the current climate. This variability shows the difficulty of future models to obtain flows for high return periods, even in the case of generating 1000-year precipitation series. The incorporation of data from past flows (paleofloods) in warm periods shows greater consistency in the estimation of quantiles of interest in sensitive infrastructures. The climate variability of the past shows increases in the flows of extreme floods by 15-20% compared to the current climate.

In the case studies of the Valdinfierno (Guadalentin) and María Cristina (Rambla de la Viuda) dams, their spillways are currently undersized, while the Duero dams in the Arribes are designed to anticipate the effects of climate change. In conclusion, dams built before 1950 require detailed studies for their adaptation to climate change.