Performance and Management of Infrastructure Networks

Joint project of Weather & Wildfire and Built Environments programmes.

Aotearoa New Zealand regularly experiences extreme weather events that threaten our safety, property and infrastructure, and incur high economic costs. The frequency of extreme weather events is increasing because of climate change.

We aim to extend the Very High Resolution Future Case Studies to build a detailed and quantified understanding of the likely impact these extreme weather events will have on our infrastructure and utility networks.

To achieve this, we are working with stakeholders in central and local government as well as utilities providers and the insurance industry to:

• use new and existing vulnerability assessments to calculate the losses and impacts to assets across the study regions.
• quantify the effect of flood management devices on stormwater network resilience and the wider exposure to flooding of the built environment.
• develop regional flood protection management strategies.
• improve our understanding of wind, snow, and ice loading impacts on electricity transmission, distribution networks and buildings, and develop new building and design standards to counter these hazards.
• assess and identify resilience interventions to ensure security of our electricity grid.

Our goal is for our research to deliver new insights to regional councils, infrastructure providers, and rural agribusiness and enhance their ability to identify and mitigate the potential impacts of extreme weather events.