Impact of extreme weather on critical infrastructure: the EU-INTACT risk framework

Abstract

Resilience of critical infrastructure (CI) to extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, high temperatures and winter storms, is one of the most demanding challenges for governments and society. Recent experiences have highlighted the economic and societal reliance on a dependable and resilient infrastructure, and the far-reaching impacts that outages or malfunctions can have. The cost of developing and maintaining CI is high given it is expected to perform under most conditions and to have realistic functional and economic design lives. Growing scientific evidence indicates that more severe and frequent extreme weather events are likely, with increasing disruption on the functioning of CI. The EU-funded INTACT project addresses these CI challenges and attempts to bring together cutting-edge knowledge and experience from across Europe to inform the development of best practice approaches in crisis response and recovery capabilities. The project considers the options for mitigating the extreme weather impacts, addressing the engineering, materials, construction, planning and design contributions of a more resilient CI system. A key component of the INTACT project is the development of a modelling and risk structure to support decision-making in the case studies. It will comprise a range of tools, data collection protocols, and other assessment methods within an over-arching decision-support structure, and supporting the simulation of infrastructure operation, including indirect impacts, and testing of mitigation measures developed with the CI owners and operators. Overall, the risk framework will: present structures for models and data requirements for decision making; identify models that support decision making; support analysis of measures to protect CI through simulation; and indicate gaps in modelling and data availability. This paper will outline the components of the risk framework, including a risk model and scenario audit facility, and illustrate its use in case studies dealing with electricity supply and winter storms, and multimodal transport from Rotterdam.