In this article, Kate Rodger, head of customer success at Cervest explains to PBC Today the importance of climate intelligence in adapting our infrastructure to address the ongoing climate crisis
According to The Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction, over the last two decades alone, extreme weather events have impacted more than 4 billion people, caused 600,000 deaths and cost nearly $1.9 trillion USD in economic losses.
From recent record heat waves in the UK and Europe, severe rainfall and flash flooding in Australia, hurricanes stretching over eight countries from the Caribbean to Canada, and recurrent wildfires on the West Coast of the US; infrastructure is suffering the harsh impact of climate on a global scale.
What’s clear is that achieving net zero won’t be enough to ride out climate volatility over the coming decades. Net zero is essential but insufficient, we need to adapt to the physical realities of climate change and accelerate adaptation investments. Per the advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) we must now accelerate our efforts as the costs of continued inaction are steep and growing rapidly for infrastructure providers.
The urgent need for infrastructure adaptation
It is the complex interdependency of infrastructure that further compounds its vulnerability to climate shocks and stresses and points to the most severe consequences imaginable. Energy, communications networks, transport, food production and water supplies are all intricately connected.
Damage or downtime in one sector quickly affects others, leading to reduced capacity and inefficiencies, loss of productivity and revenue and potentially devastating consequences on a far more serious scale including loss of essential resources for people, and risks to safety and health.
The impact of the most recent heatwave that spread across the UK and Europe in July 2022 has thrown the spotlight on how UK infrastructure is ill-prepared to manage extreme weather events. Record-breaking temperatures of +40C have disrupted travel, construction, education, healthcare and livelihood with over 40 homes being destroyed by wildfires in London.
What we are witnessing today is that the surface area of risk is expanding – with new regions, cities, and countries reaching new thresholds. Our infrastructure is not built to withstand some of the forecasted changes. We can expect some rising risks to exceed the original engineering design – meaning assets may have to be replaced, relocated or stranded.
Repairing damaged infrastructure, remediation costs, finding affordable insurance cover for high-risk assets, the inability to claim for certain ‘at risk’ assets or the penalties and reputational damage in failure to meet upcoming regulations from national governments – these all constitute ‘the costs of inaction’ that are only set to worsen and grow exponentially.
The “ambitious, accelerated action required to adapt to climate change” called for by the IPCC has never been more critical. And it’s clear that we need a new climate literacy in planning, funding and building our critical infrastructure and valuable assets. And yet governments and infrastructure owners continue to underinvest in infrastructure adaptations.
So, what can governments, businesses and infrastructure guardians do to manage climate-related disruption, mitigate these risks and ensure essential protection and climate resilience for critical infrastructure assets?
Unlocking adaptation through climate intelligence (CI)
Climate intelligence (CI) gives infrastructure owners and operators a never-before-possible view of every asset they own, manage or rely on, providing on-demand decision-ready insights into the likelihood of climate shocks and stresses now and across multiple possible futures.
It provides infrastructure owners, operators and suppliers with unprecedented clarity about how climate risk may impact infrastructure and enables them to prioritise which actions to take and when.
Knowing an asset’s direct and indirect risks enables effective adaptation planning, allowing decision-makers to target adaptive measures. Planned developments can be reviewed for long-term desirability, and redesigned, reprioritized or relocated for greater resilience. Investors, shareholders and stakeholders can all see the same picture of risk, streamlining their decision-making.
Today, increasing infrastructure’s resilience to the impacts of climate change is a priority. Climate intelligence can provide certainty and confidence, with sound, science-backed insights and analysis, allowing infrastructure owners to identify and map a strategic pathway forward, plan and continuously revise adaptation strategies.
In an equally crucial matter, they can engage multiple stakeholders in consensus around a single source of truth, making it easier to prioritise investments, identify low-risk locations and assets and create a compelling economic case for long-term infrastructure investment and untapped growth opportunities.
Kate Rodger
Head of customer success
Cervest
