Overview
Infrastructure systems are essential physical assets that support our economy, society and civilization. Physical facilities such as roads, railways, air/ports, buildings dams water pipes, electricity transmission, communication, sewerage and drainage systems are being damaged by climate change. The current waves of climate change are affecting our infrastructure systems and pose threats which require immediate local and global actions. In view of the on-going economic downturn, global warming and increasing frequency of extreme weather events, mitigation strategies may not be adequate in adaptation to ensure human security in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is important to promote a paradigm shift towards the identification and assessment of the various vulnerabilities of our economy and environment towards adaptation.
Developing adaptive strategies has a new urgency for both politicians and policy managers. Decisions made in the creation of new infrastructure need to occur in a way which ensures that the outcomes of those decisions are robust enough to cope with, or adapt to, changing climate conditions in the future.
The Adaptation Paradigm
Australia infrastructure is valued at A$1,500 billion (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002). The severe heat waves which occurred in North-Western Australia in recent summers illustrate the risks to human health from short-duration temperature extremes. We need to systematically apply knowledge from a range of disciplines to analyse how climate change is likely to affect our settlements and critical infrastructure.
Adaptation strategies aim to increase the resilience of human and natural systems to possible changes in climatic conditions, while taking account of the social dimensions of distributing losses. Such strategies should be frameworks for managing the ongoing climate risk sustainably, offering potential to reduce long term economic, social and environmental costs. The Centre for Infrastructure and Engineering Management (CIEM), at Griffith University focuses on research on climate change adaptation for infrastructure systems to improve our understanding of the technical issues that relate to critical infrastructure protection which in turn would help cope and adapt to risk and enhance response capabilities. Below is a typical example.
Infrastructure Interdependency
Infrastructure disruption and damage will not occur in isolation because of infrastructure interdependency. This simply means failure in one infrastructure will cascade to other connected infrastructures causing derivative losses.
CIEM hosts a number of research projects targeting the reliability, readiness, and continuity of infrastructure services (which rely on physical and cyber based assets) so that they are resilient to disruptions, and are adaptable to any impairment that climate change may cause. In doing so, our research focuses on the impact and the increasing complexity inherent in the growing interconnectedness and interdependence among infrastructure systems. More specifically our research examines the relationships and dependencies among critical infrastructure systems and/or industries to show how climate change impact and risk from one sector affects other sectors. CIEM research focuses on:
- Understanding problems that address infrastructure interdependencies, in order to promote resilience and to minimize vulnerabilities to disruptive cascading effects that can magnify the impact of failures and their consequences to society.
- Developing methods, tools and technologies for identifying, quantifying, and modeling infrastructure interdependencies, and the risk they pose to other infrastructures.
CIEM actively seeks to develop R&D core partnerships in this research field for better understanding of the full scope of climate change impact on infrastructure.