Resilient Infrastructure Systems: Closing The Resiliency Gap

While conventional infrastructure resilience tools and metrics attempt to address climate risks on a project-by-project basis, there is a significant gap in understanding and measuring the systemic risks and challenges posed by climate change on infrastructure networks. Sophisticated approaches fail to capture the broader system-wide impacts, such as the disruptions to utilities in urban areas and the cascading effects of network failures, disproportionately affecting the less developed communities. This policy brief advocates for a comprehensive mapping of existing benchmarks and indicators to create a framework for measuring systemic resilience. The brief emphasizes the critical need to integrate physical climate risk considerations into early planning and financial decision- making to effectively address and mitigate systemic impacts. This approach is designed to encourage governments and investors to focus on projects that not only promise significant economic, social, and environmental benefits but also enhance systemic resilience at the community and ecosystem levels. This collaboration aims to aid governments in formulating national adaptation plans and resilient infrastructure decision-making models. The recommendations in this paper can also help guide the next methodological steps to transform theoretical concepts of systemic resilience into practical, actionable tools. The recommendations will be critical to orient the prioritization of infrastructure investments that are more resilient and inclusive, addressing especially those most vulnerable to climate change impacts.