Build community resilience to all hazards by considering systemic risks, interdependencies and vulnerabilities in infrastructure planning and decision-making.
- Social benefits
- Liveable cities
- Connected regions
- Destabilised world
Key messages
A nationally consistent, all-hazards, systemic approach to understanding and quantifying risk will ensure Australia’s assets, networks, systems, communities and places are resilient.
Identifying and communicating interconnections and interdependencies before, during and after shocks or stresses is critical to managing systematic vulnerability.
Effective decision-making needs diverse and inclusive collaboration and data.
Quantifying the potential impact of disasters and the benefits of strengthening associated systems will build the economic case for investing in resilience.
Frameworks and feedback mechanisms are required to gauge compliance and the success of sustainability and resilience policy and investment.
What are the impacts?
The reform will improve the quality of services through safer settlement patterns and less exposure to shocks and stresses. Asset owners’ and operators’ understanding of systemic risk will improve planning and mitigate service disruption.
Decision-makers across all sectors, communities, industries and governments will have more accountability and make better decisions that consider systemic risk. This will enable positive economic, social and environmental outcomes. In particular, more resilient communities and assets will have material gross domestic product, efficiency and productivity benefits (reduction in rectification costs, safer communities).
New tools and guidance, better decision-making frameworks, increased transparency and higher-quality data will improve governance. In a complex and interconnected environment, geographically constraining analysis to a place will support effective decision-making and allow a systemic consideration of risk.
How easy is it to implement?
The reform requires national coordination across all sectors, levels of government and assurance processes. This introduces a high degree of complexity. While skills and resources are generally available, governments and industry may experience capacity constraints requiring large upskilling of staff to ensure consistency and better application of new scenarios.
The reform will require minor new government processes. However, investing in resilient design can minimise losses and repair costs for infrastructure owners, users and taxpayers.
How certain are the outcomes?
The reform has a small level of anticipated risk. More robust considerations of resilience and infrastructure adaption will improve community acceptance.
Governments at all levels have a large degree of control over this reform, which primarily stems from government action.
The reform has a strong, reliable and credible evidence base. However, there needs to be improvements in data standardisation and sharing arrangements to increase community confidence.
| Social |
Natural disaster impact on people
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| Governance |
Consideration of climate risk
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| Economic |
Average annual cost of disasters
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Read more about this recommendation in 2.1 Infrastructure planning for an uncertain future in the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan.
Reform implementation pathway
This recommendation comprises of outcomes and activities, which form the reform's implementation pathway.
The implementation pathway is designed to guide change agents on the supporting activities necessary to achieve the overall reform.
For each outcome and activity, we propose change agents to act as:
- Proposed sponsor: facilitate, coordinate and champion the recommendation
- Proposed lead: deliver specific activities or lead related outcomes
- Support: share ownership, contributions or knowledge to enable the reform process.
Create an environment for consistent action by establishing clear cross-sector policy priorities to inform resilience planning, policy prioritisation and reform decisions.
0-5 years
Improve strategic oversight and coordination of resilience outcomes across sectors and jurisdictions by establishing nationally consistent scenarios and common policy priorities.
0-5 years
Improve community resilience and coordinated action through a consistent, nationwide, systemic approach to risk identification.
0-5 years
Facilitate collaboration across sectors, layers of government, asset owners and operators, businesses and communities by creating formal governance arrangements, resourcing and a convening authority in line with the National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework.
0-5 years
Enable timely information exchange and build accountability by expanding participants to the Trusted Information Sharing Network, sharing information and best practice and developing connections and ongoing relationships.
0-5 years
Inform decisions on risk reduction options and approaches, and enable data driven decision- making by standardising and sharing data about disasters, hazards and asset and network independency.
0-5 years
Improve place-based and network-based systemic risk assessment and decision-making by producing local hazard maps for asset owners and operators and communities.
0-5 years
Inform decisions to increase the resilience of a place, network or asset across Australia by identifying cascading systemic failures, interdependencies and interconnections and local vulnerability of all sectors’ assets and networks.
0-5 years
Better predict and mitigate major hazards and risks with a national risk and disaster probability model for all hazards.
10-15 years
Ensure a systemic approach to resilience is established and considered by place-based resilience bodies, such as Resilience Sydney.
0-5 years
Facilitate joint action by establishing a common, long-term understanding of the potential impacts of climate change, both nationally and locally, that informs land use and infrastructure planning and decision-making.
0-5 years
Enable consistent planning, shared responsibility and joint action by establishing long-term (2035, 2050 and 2100) Australian national climate scenarios. These should be based on possible climate futures that align with different Representative Concentration Pathways, and projections and forecasts for economic activity, energy use and land use patterns.
0-5 years
Establish a national understanding of climate adaptation risk assessment by publishing and communicating the scenarios. Target communities with differing levels of scientific and technical expertise, from technical roles to decision-makers and the broad community. Ensure the tools and data are accessible and increase understanding.
0-5 years
Support cross-sector coordination and shared responsibility by undertaking and publishing an annual assessment of the consideration and effectiveness of climate risk and resilience in infrastructure planning and decision-making.
0-5 years
Embed climate risk considerations into land use and infrastructure planning and decision-making by developing a training program, tools and guidance materials.
0-5 years
Ensure existing and future asset planning considers climate risk by conducting climate adaptation risk assessments, developing strategic planning and policy decisions, and designing and approving future assets using climate scenarios, tools and guidance.
0-5 years
Ensure climate risk is incorporated into infrastructure projects and services by mandating the consideration of climate risk in project assessment.
10-15 years
Ensure infrastructure decisions consider resilience through clear and harmonised guidance on how projects can address risks and value resilience.
0-5 years
Ensure infrastructure assessment frameworks, and associated tools and guidance, including the Australian Transport Assessment and Planning Guidelines, consider risks and resilience by incorporating future scenarios and hazard information.
0-5 years
Support land use and strategic planners, infrastructure and emergency planners and local governments to develop state and territory, regional and local plans by enhancing infrastructure assessment frameworks and associated climate and disaster risk tools and guidance.
0-5 years
Value resilience in infrastructure investment by developing a training program and guidance materials on how to value resilience in decision-making through the infrastructure lifecycle.
0-5 years