March 2018 FBiH magazine article World Bank assisting the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to mainstream climate risk in road management B osnia and Herzegovina (B&H) has been suffering increased flooding and landslide events in recent years due to the impact of Herzegovina (FBH) resulting in €2 billion of damage to residential, community and commercial property and to the transport and global climate change. In 2014 a 1 in 500 year communications systems in some cantons. flood event affected 60 towns and cities in 24 Around €257 million of these costs were municipalities in the Federation of Bosnia and associated with repairing damaged roads. Landslide, Location: Nemila, Main road M17, Main road M18, Priboj – Simin han km 14+420 – Topcic polje -Lasva km 3+880 (Floods 2014) 14+650, Landslide above and below road grade line (Floods 2014) Recognising the need to develop resilience in Sarajevo (FBH). The project team is supporting FBH road infrastructure to such events, the PC Roads FBH, which is responsible for the World Bank is funding a programme to maintenance and management of the main increase the resilience of the main road road network in the Federation. network in FBH. As part of that programme a project to mainstream climate risk in road The Federal Hydrometeorological Institute, the management has been agreed. The research River Basin Agencies for the Sava River consortium selected to deliver the project is Watershed and for the Watershed of Adriatic led by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) Sea, the Geological Survey of FBH, and the in collaboration with both the University of Federal Administration of Civil Protection are all providing essential information required for Birmingham (UK) and the University of the project. 1 PC Roads FBH will implement the findings of assessments, developing a suitable geographic the project in order to help with the provision information system structure for viewing of safe, efficient and resilient road network hazard data, evaluating current disaster taking account of the excellent real-time management procedures, and identifying information provided by both the River Basin future actions to improve the resilience of Agencies (river water levels and flood FBH’s road network. An integral part of the warnings) and the Federal project is to build the local capacity required to Hydrometeorological Institute (weather carry out hazard and risk assessment, to information, including fog alerts). Input from improve climate resilience work and to the Geological Survey will also enable PC Roads mitigate the impact of such hazards. FBH to better manage landslide issues that have a significant impact on certain parts of the The project started in November 2017 and will end in July 2018. A number of dissemination main road network. activities are planned including two The consortium is carrying out a systematic participatory workshops to be held in mid- review of the data available for hazard and risk March and in mid-June 2018. For further details of the project and how you can engage in it, please contact: Dr Sarah Reeves, TRL. sreeves@trl.co.uk Dr Suada Dzebo, University of Sarajevo. suada.dzebo@gf.unsa.ba 2