Sharpening the climate resilience of infrastructure in Australia

Resilience is rapidly climbing the national agenda. As climate impact events rise in length and regularity, there is a sharpening of focus on resilience of modern infrastructure across every sector.

When the first National Climate Change Risk Assessment underscored the systemic risks Australia is facing as the climate continues to change, resilience was always going to be central to the story. Industries and governments are acutely aware of how resilient infrastructure underpins our economic prosperity, supply chains and communities. 

Australia has experienced 21 nationally determined disasters since 1970, with two-thirds occurring since 2009. The Federal Government has budgeted almost $25 billion for disaster relief for 2024 to 2026, which is more than the country spent in the 17 years from 2005 to 2022.

While focus has increased, investment is trailing. There is a resilience paradox – awareness without equally matched investment. With budgets having to increase for disaster relief, it’s a sharp reminder why it’s important to invest in proactive works so that regions and infrastructure can be better prepared, and recover more effectively.

The Australian Government recently published information that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there’s nearly a $10 return on investment. Addressing this paradox and realising this opportunity requires changing the way we think about resilience.

At its core, resilience isn’t a single component, but instead the functionality of a whole ecosystem. The productivity and prosperity unlocked when whole systems are shaped to adapt opens the door to riding the severity of disruption ahead.

This approach was applied to a recent Aurecon project with Port of Brisbane using the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Resilient Infrastructure Scorecard to understand each dimension of disaster risk: hazards, exposures, vulnerabilities, capacities. It fortified the importance of interconnected infrastructure systems and identified a pathway for strengthening the port’s resilience in response to a multitude of possible disruptions. 

This example isn’t awareness alone; it’s looking at resilience through the lens to which planning, investment and decision-making is undertaken. 

Three steps toward infrastructure for resilience

For some time, the conversation around resilience has centred on understanding the challenge; risk assessments, vulnerability mapping, planning. That work remains essential.

The steps to take resilient infrastructure towards infrastructure that strengthens resilience include:

1. Changing the investment logic: Resilience is thinking about who benefits when systems keep running. For example, roads that are resilient allow access to healthcare facilities for community and healthcare workers or first responders. By starting with the direct value to a customer or community, the investment logic for resilience is shifted to strategic investment decisions that account for changing climate impacts.
2. Managing over timeframes: Consider where resilience investment provides the greatest value, whether in capex or opex investments, or through adjusting management systems, pricing regimes or insurance types. Bringing resilience and adaptation considerations earlier into planning and decision-making equals more options as conditions change. 
3. Resilience through co-creation: Cooperation with non-traditional partners, or third-parties that have ownership over interconnected infrastructure in the same ecosystem, enables a risk and opportunity landscape that unlocks co-benefits and shared value.

Framing investment through the lens of resilience

How can we achieve long-term resilience? It’s about being prepared, ready to respond to plausible future conditions and having the flexibility to manage uncertainty together with adjusting approaches. 

This was Aurecon’s mindset when supporting the Queensland Government with the Darling Downs District Flood Study. The study found specific locations on key highways to concentrate planning efforts so future upgrades could enhance flood resilience across the road network. Having engineers and designers in the mix brings system-thinking and problem-solving skills well suited to shaping more resilient outcomes.

Pleasingly, there are more instances of these shifts to new ways of working and a focus on risk and resilience. Aurecon together with the CSIRO is working on enhancing telecommunications resilience. By analysing the value generated by resilient telecommunications infrastructure in communities, the project is clarifying the benefits of resilient investment and how government and infrastructure owners might improve investment in resilience. The project deploys the CSIRO's enabling resilience investment approach, which aims to support Australia for large-scale future-ready investments, equitable recovery from recent disasters, and proactive reduction of disaster risk and adaptation to climate change.

As the severity and duration of extreme events continues to change, infrastructure investors will increasingly focus on where their capital can deliver the best long-term returns, creating a clear mandate for the resilience of infrastructure to attract and retain investment. 

Companies that lean into planning, designing and delivering infrastructure for resilience are no longer solely identifying risks. Whether it’s rethinking supply chains, considering the interconnectedness of their ecosystem, or preparing assets for disruption, it’s about planning for strong and adaptive futures.