Over the last three years, significant damage and disruption have been due to natural hazards impacting infrastructure. Damage often results in cascading consequences that quickly spread across society and the economy. Recent damage to public infrastructure from flooding in Queensland in February and March of 2022 was estimated at $492 million. Challenges associated with repairing and restoring infrastructure are exacerbated by compound disasters that see natural hazards occur concurrently or in sequence.
Though research has been undertaken to understand the vulnerability of residential, commercial, and industrial assets in Australia across a range of different hazards, less attention has been given to understanding the vulnerability of infrastructure assets, which we assume to be mature within the organisations and sectors that own, operate, and manage infrastructure assets. There is a limited understanding of infrastructure risk and impact information between private and public infrastructure agencies and policy and strategy arms of government. There is also a broader demand to understand infrastructure vulnerability in a changing climate and how to best build resilience.
The aim of this project is to develop vulnerability models that can be used to quantify how public infrastructure is impacted by natural hazards. The project aims to develop models for both direct and indirect impacts for a selection of infrastructure and natural hazard types.
The rationale for developing these models is so they may be used to understand long-term natural hazard risk to infrastructure networks, for estimating recovery time following a disaster, and so they may be used to facilitate cost-benefit analysis when assessing investments in infrastructure resilience. While such vulnerability models may exist internally within certain infrastructure network owner/operator agencies, few of these are publicly available.
Related projects
| Project |
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| Robust temporary building repairs |