How to make infrastructure more resilient against climate change

The question of how to make infrastructure more resilient against climate change is at the core of ICSI’s work. As the planet heats up, the scale, scope, and severity of climate impacts will increase, adding pressure to key infrastructure systems that are already stretched. These challenges, coupled with ageing infrastructure and underinvestment, are already having devastating consequences for communities around the globe.

With their technical expertise and know-how, the role of engineers in driving climate action for infrastructure cannot be understated. Engineers need to be included in policy-level conversations around climate change, and likewise, climate action needs to be embedded in the engineering industry’s daily practice. At COP26, ICSI held a roundtable discussion on the role of engineers in climate action, the outcomes of which were collated in this report. Through advocacy, thought leadership and knowledge production, ICSI aims to accelerate and mobilize the engineering community on climate action. Initiatives such as Infrastructure Pathways and the Race to Resilience, along with ICSI’s published whitepapers, all speak to this.

The below Civil Engineering piece on infrastructure resilience addresses some of these issues and more. ICSI Programme Director, Savina Carluccio, is featured in this piece, speaking about the unintended vulnerabilities and dependencies in infrastructure that can undermine its resilience.

Read the article by Robert L. Reid here: How to make infrastructure more resilient against climate change.

This article first appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Civil Engineering as “Responding to Code Red.”  Find original article here.