Building resilience through recovery: investment decision-making

Abstract

The 2023 North Island Extreme Weather Events – including the January floods in Auckland and Cyclone Gabrielle in February – have highlighted the vulnerability of critical infrastructure systems to disruptive events. Mainstreaming resilience into the initial design and construction processes of critical infrastructure is vital to the continuity of services during disruptive events.

Recovery following disruptive events provides an opportunity to improve critical infrastructure systems' resilience. Strategic investment in repair and reinstatement works can reduce infrastructure system vulnerabilities and increase the future capacity of systems to respond and recover from disruptive events and to adapt to long-term stressors and change.

To support the integration of resilience into critical infrastructure planning, we have reviewed critical infrastructure resilience frameworks from around the world. The analysis aims to identify innovative approaches and best practices to effectively integrate resilience considerations into infrastructure repair and rebuild investment decision-making.