Practice
Adaptation Solutions (Physical and Operational)
Aspect contributions
How this practice contributes to the green port aspects.
| Aspect | Role | Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Climate Adaptation | Core | - |
| Regulatory Compliance | Secondary | - |
| Certification and Benchmarking | Secondary | - |
| Risk Management | Secondary | - |
| Engineering Design | Secondary | - |
| Social Licence and Community Engagement | Secondary | - |
Summary
Physical adaptations and operational measures to improve resilience to climate change and provide adaptation could be considered the most common currently employed.
Physical adaptation and resilience measures encompass the structural, engineered, technological, and nature-based interventions used to strengthen the resilience of port infrastructure. These measures involve structures, systems, technologies and services, covering both traditional engineering and innovative, flexible approaches designed to cope with climate uncertainty.
Nature-based and hybrid solutions complement engineered measures. Soft engineering, vegetation enhancement, and working with nature concepts help absorb wave energy, reduce erosion, and provide ecological co-benefits.
Details
A major component of physical adaptation is the reinforcement, modification, or protection of existing assets. This includes raising or strengthening quays, breakwaters, flood defenses, and other critical structures. Because future climate conditions are uncertain (IPCC, 2023, PIANC, 2020), new or replacement infrastructure should be designed with flexibility, allowing it to be modified as conditions change. This avoids maladaptation and ensures assets remain functional even as extreme events become more frequent or severe.
For example, the Climate-Dyke in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany illustrates this principle. Built with a 0.5 m climate surcharge and an expanded crest width, the dyke allows for future heightening without the need for further land purchase (footprint) (PIANC, 2020). This shows how additional up-front provision can preserve future options. Such an example could easily be applied to other port infrastructure, such as quay walls and breakwaters (see Fernández-Pérez et al., 2024).
Physical measures also include relocating vulnerable assets, installing demountable or temporary structures, and providing physical sanctuaries for equipment during extreme events. Redundancy, such as backup generators, duplicated systems, or temporary infrastructure, helps maintain operations when primary systems fail. Although redundancy diverges from recent trends toward lean design, in a climate-change context, it can help to strengthen adaptive capacity and reduce losses during extreme events.
Some specific examples of physical measures to mitigate climate change risks include elevation of new port areas above projected sea-level rise and storm surge levels, reinforced quay walls designed for higher water levels and wave loading and integration with large-scale coastal and storm surge protection systems, construction of flood protection walls and raised wharf areas, elevation and flood-proofing of critical electrical and control equipment substations, power distribution systems, and fuel infrastructure, improved stormwater drainage and pumping capacity in low-lying port zones, installation of permanent and deployable flood barriers at marine terminals and design standards requiring higher finished floor levels for new port assets.
The Lucinda Bulk Sugar Terminal case study in Australia highlights the importance of designing for controlled failure (PIANC, 2020). After cyclone damage, engineers redesigned the wharf so that the deck, not the connections, would fail first, creating a predictable failure hierarchy. The deck is therefore designed to fail before the deck’s connections, improving resilience by preventing catastrophic structural damage (PIANC, 2020).
Another important category of physical adaptation and resilience measures is monitoring and sensing technologies. Installing realtime monitoring systems, warning equipment, and SMART technologies enables organizations to track environmental conditions and asset performance. For more acute cases, such as extreme weather events, continuous forecasting of weather and other parameters could ensure that vessels may be moved to more appropriate locations within the port or even kept offshore. These systems support adaptive management by providing the data needed to trigger timely interventions, such as retrofitting a breakwater or adjusting operational protocols. See also Digital Technology practices.
Nature-based and hybrid solutions complement engineered measures. -These measures can be especially effective as low-regret or win-win options. See also Nature-based Solutions practice.
Together, these physical measures form a flexible, multi-layered toolbox that enables ports and waterways to adapt incrementally or transformatively as climate risks evolve.
Enabling factors
Climate adaptation can be strongly assisted through laws and regulations, such as those that, in some jurisdictions, require climate risk assessment, disclosure and resilience planning. National strategies in particular, such as National Adaptation Plans, as well as sector strategies and institutional frameworks can also assist greatly. Clear national policy signals that translate international commitments into sector-specific expectations for ports are a key enabler: where a national adaptation plan, a port sector master plan, or a sovereign climate commitment provides a credible trajectory, port authorities, operators, and financiers align more readily. The policy environment (laws, regulations, strategies, institutional frameworks) within climate change understanding and climate change planning is a rapidly developing landscape. Of particular note are the requirements for ports to undertake reporting and inherent as an incentive is to reduce risk to the ports itself, assisting with planning and avoiding costs. Ring-fenced green finance windows, including concessional capital from multilateral development banks and the ASEAN Catalytic Green Finance Facility (ACGF), are a critical enabler for first-of-kind investment. Integration of port-relevant activities into the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance provides a further enabler by giving lenders and issuers a shared reference.
Climate adaptation can be assisted through guidelines and improved standards. Further, the expectations of standards in climate adaptation planning varies greatly, therefore standardization of standards is an enabler. Regional knowledge exchange has emerged as an enabler in its own right. DMC ports benefit from structured opportunities to learn from peers in comparable operating and regulatory environments, alongside examples from other regions. Anchor ports that publish transparent sustainability disclosures and host peer delegations play a catalytic role for surrounding ports in their national and sub-regional contexts. Structured ADB technical assistance, particularly for project preparation, gap analysis, and governance strengthening, can help ports convert ambition into investment-ready projects.
Sustainable procurement enables climate-resilient port development by embedding environmental, social and governance considerations into investment, design, construction and operational decisions. Through lifecycle-based purchasing, climate-risk criteria, supplier accountability and resilience standards, procurement helps ensure infrastructure is adaptable, durable and aligned with long-term sustainability objectives, reducing climate vulnerabilities while supporting responsible economic development and supply chain resilience.
Finally, partnerships with shipping lines, cargo owners, tenants, and energy utilities are recurring enablers; no port advances its green agenda successfully in isolation from its value chain. Some climate adaptation measures in particular are heavily reliant on partnerships and collaboration, including those requiring additional land, share land uses and nature-based adaptation.