The ‘new normal’: building infrastructure for a climate-resilient future

Mark Twain once said: “It’s difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future.”

The UK uses Victorian railway lines, dams with an average age of more than 100 years, and even roads whose routes were first laid out by the Romans.

The engineers designing these structures could barely have imagined the changes that would occur over their lifespan. Yet their decisions have had implications for decades or even centuries to come.

One thing we now know is that the future climate will be increasingly different from the past.

A ‘new normal’ for infrastructure

Though the specifics are uncertain, the trend is clear: climate change represents a ‘new normal’ for infrastructure.

Last year, global average temperatures were 1.55 degrees above the pre-industrial average – breaking the previous record, which was set in 2023.

Alongside these temperatures come more frequent and severe extreme weather events, including floods, heatwaves, and wildfires.

Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need to ramp up climate resilience efforts.

Infrastructure is a critical part of the solution

Infrastructure needs to be a critical part of the solution to climate change.

First, the infrastructure industry has a major part to play in efforts to decarbonise our economies, particularly through the switch to renewable energy.

Second, how we plan, design, build, and manage infrastructure needs to adapt to our changing climate:

• Climate change poses risks to infrastructure assets, as roads melt, reservoirs run dry, and tunnels flood. Just this month, Storm Floris brought winds of up to 82mph to the northern UK, leaving more than 43,000 homes in Scotland without power.
• Infrastructure can worsen climate change risks – for example, dams collapsing following heavy rains, or electricity transmission lines igniting wildfires, as is believed to have happened last year with the largest wildfire in Texas’s history.
• Climate change will also create new demands for infrastructure, such as reinforcement of flood defences. In the Netherlands, the National Delta programme has identified the need to strengthen 1500 km of flood defences by the middle of the century.

Climate resilience needs to become standard practice across all infrastructure sectors for new and retrofit infrastructure.

This is likely to require a combination of physical (‘hard’) measures, such as heat-resistant road surfaces, and management (‘soft’) measures, such as more frequent maintenance inspections.

Though the exact measures will depend on the context, the aim is to identify and manage the potential impacts of climate change throughout the lifespan of the asset.

Getting things right at the outset

Well-targeted and proactive measures are highly cost-effective.

One study found that integrating climate resilience measures yielded an average of four dollars of benefits for every dollar invested.

Getting things right at the outset will be much cheaper than trying to fix them in the future.

The OECD’s report, Infrastructure for a Climate-resilient Future, sets out the following priorities:

• First, climate change should be a chief consideration when planning new infrastructure. There is a need to improve data sharing to better understand expected future climate impacts.
• Second, climate resilience should become the norm in infrastructure financing. Climate risks such as floods could reduce the net value of infrastructure portfolios by up to 27%. Better reporting and disclosure can help make the value of resilience visible. And better support for project preparation can translate concepts into action.
• Third, we need clear regulations and standards for resilience in key sectors. Technical codes and standards that were based on past climate norms may need updating to reflect trends such as warmer summers, higher peak rainfall, and drought risk.
• Last, we should take advantage of new approaches to delivering infrastructure services. Nature-based solutions, such as protecting watersheds to reduce the need for water treatment, can be an essential complement to traditional infrastructure. But realising this potential will require new skill sets, training, and collaboration.

Next steps for resilience in the UK

In July, the UK government published its Resilience Action Plan, detailing how the UK can withstand and recover from a range of shocks, from cyberattacks to heatwaves.

The plan signals a welcome shift from emergency response to systemic resilience.

The measures outlined above, from planning and financing to regulation and innovation, can play a critical role in translating planning into action.

Across all these strands, the engineering profession has a key role to play in building a climate-resilient future.

In case you missed it

• 3 ways the UK can take climate resilience beyond flood defences
• Why can climate resilience efforts fall through the cracks?
• The UK Labour government: one year on

*The ICE welcomes guests to share their views about infrastructure policy issues on the Infrastructure Blog. These views are the views of the individual.

If you're interested in writing for the Infrastructure Blog, please email [email protected]. The ICE reserves the right not to publish articles that have been submitted.