Heavy rainfall and flood vulnerability of Singapore-Malaysia high speed rail system

Abstract Change of climate is unequivocal, and many of the observed changes are unprecedented over five decades to millennia. It is expected that the global atmosphere and ocean is increasingly getting warmer, the amount of ice on the earth is decreasing over the oceans, and the sea level has risen. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such temperature change is around 0.78 °C over decades. Without international collaboration towards Paris Agreement, the temperature change could potentially rise over 5.5°C in 2100. In addition, it is highly likely that even such a small change can trigger the worst of other extreme natural threats to interdependent urban and transport infrastructure systems. The vulnerability of those infrastructure systems has not been comprehensively addressed in open literature due to the fact that the actual climate change impact depends on specific differences of local environmental and geographical conditions. As a result, our research will highlight the extremes that can lead to system failure, degraded operation and ultimately, delays to train services. The emphasis is placed on the newly proposed Malaysia–Singapore high speed rail network, which can be affected by the most-frequent severe weather conditions including heavy rainfall and flash flood. It is found that tunnelling, steep cutting and ballast foundation are ones of the most vulnerable assets from a heavy rainfall or a flash flood.