Join us for the next EIA Community Debate exploring how climate and extreme weather resilience can be considered at the design stage for infrastructure projects. This event will build on discussions from the previous EIA Community Debate on extreme weather and EIA, and the need for climate and weather related impacts to be better explored during planning and development to ensure infrastructure is fit for the future.

The event will feature expert speaker presentations as well as interactive breakout discussions, bringing together EIA professionals from across the IES membership.

Workshop: Climate resilience through design

The year is 2124. Is our infrastructure fit for purpose? How could we have improved our processes to better support climate resilience? 

The design life of infrastructure projects varies and can range from 20 and 50 years, all the way up to 120 years. In this workshop we will explore the following questions and identify if having an optimistic or pessimistic vision of the future affects how we approach assessments, mitigation and design:

• Do EIAs take into account the true design life of infrastructure?
• Which year do we envision when we are preparing our environmental assessments and designing for climate resilience? 

Presentation: Weather resilience and climate change impact assessment at Network Rail
Climate change and extreme weather conditions have a significant impact on the safety and performance of railways. This presentation will provide an overview of Network Rail's approach to assessing the impact of climate change and weather events on their infrastructure and how findings from these assessments are fed into design, construction and maintenance projects to ensure resilience. 

Our EIA Community debates provide a forum for thought-provoking, critical conversations around EIA from a science perspective. The Community aims to connect and support environmental scientists and practitioners working across a range of specialisms involved in the EIA process, and to facilitate meaningful discussion on the key issues facing the sector. Find out more about the EIA Community and how you can get involved. 

Register your place now to take advantage of the opportunity to network with fellow professionals.

Our speakers 

Eleni Antoniades

Eleni is Vice President at the IES, where she founded, and continues to play a leading role in, the EIA community. She is also a retired Vice Chair of the IES and a board member since 2016, helping shape the organisation’s strategy.

Eleni is a Project Environmental and Sustainability Lead with more than 20 years’ experience in leading the environmental impact assessment and the environmental management during the design/construction of infrastructure projects.

In recent years, her focus has been on the delivery of aviation and infrastructure projects in challenging environments, specialising in Antarctica.

Eleni’s background is in environmental science and she has a technical and practical approach, helping to ensure projects go beyond legislative compliance and environmental requirements, into best practice, current methods and new technology and innovation. Her numerous project awards include the MOD Sustainable Project of the year.

Lisa Constable
Lisa is the strategic lead for Weather Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation at Network Rail. She is working to implement Network Rail’s Climate Change Strategy and to embed management of climate risk within policies and procedures and support the Regions with implementation of their Adaptation Plans.

Lisa has 20 years’ experience in the climate change field and is passionate about supporting global efforts to respond to the climate challenge. Her experience spans climate change consultancy with a focus on climate risk and adaptation for private and public sector organisations in South Africa and other developed and developing countries around the world as well as emissions g and flooding policy analysis, development and implementation for the UK government.