European airports facing climate change: IHCantabria proposes climate risk archetypes to guide their adaptation

A study developed at IHCantabria analyzes the situation of 226 European airports and classifies 23 types of climate risk, whose consideration can improve strategic decision making

A research led by researchers from the Environmental Hydraulics Institute of the University of Cantabria (IHCantabria) proposes a methodology to classify critical infrastructures, such as airports, according to their exposure to climate risk.

The results of this work have recently been published in the scientific journal Climate Risk Management, in an article written by Esther Barrios Crespo, Saúl Torres Ortega and Pedro Díaz-Simal, who address one of the great challenges of the coming decades in the face of the growing impacts of climate change. Their study proposes a multi-risk and multidimensional approach that combines climate hazard indicators -intense rainfall, coastal flooding, extreme winds and high temperatures- with physical, economic and social exposure and vulnerability factors.

A comprehensive and replicable approach to adapting critical infrastructures

From this framework or perspective, it is possible to characterize climate risk in a comprehensive and operational manner, identifying risk patterns through the use of machine learning techniques. The application of this methodology has resulted in the classification of 226 European airports into 23 climate risk archetypes, which constitutes a very useful tool for the design of more effective and specific adaptation strategies, taking into account the territorial context of each airport or critical infrastructure.

“This classification has allowed us to group airports with similar risk characteristics ─in terms of their levels of exposure, vulnerability and hazard─ to create a solid basis that allows us to propose adaptation solutions by analogy, sharing experiences and effective measures between airports with comparable risks,” explains Esther Barrios Crespo, lead author of the scientific paper. Therefore, the consideration of this methodology could facilitate decision making and the planning of more effective adaptation measures, which can be replicable between analogous airports, at an international level.

The analysis developed by IHCantabria research staff reveals which airports have the highest levels of aggregate risk in the historical scenario, breaking down the contribution of each type of threat to the total level of risk. This information is presented in a clear and visual way in the recently published article, so that decision makers can quickly identify the most vulnerable infrastructures.

Towards more robust and efficient planning in the face of climate change

“One of the main advances of the study is its ability to identify the predominant sources of risk and the most affected dimensions in each type of airport. In addition, the approach allows us to observe geographical and temporal patterns in the evolution of risk under different climate change scenarios,” says Saúl Torres Ortega, another of the article’s authors.

Classification by archetypes not only facilitates a better understanding of risk, but also represents a useful tool for strategic decision-making. “Because, by identifying analogous airports, it opens up the possibility of transferring solutions between infrastructures with similar characteristics, optimizing resources and reducing uncertainties in the planning and adaptation processes,” says Pedro Díaz-Simal, who emphasizes that this type of classification had not yet been developed in the scientific literature with a combined perspective of multiple threats and dimensions of risk.

As next lines of work, the IHCantabria team plans to advance in the improvement of risk indicators and the incorporation of uncertainty in the analysis, in order to further improve the robustness of the results.

The full content of the article can be accessed through the following link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2025.100717

Risk framework considered in the study