Welcome to the

Resilient Infrastructure NZ
Project Pages

It is vitally important to government, businesses and households that the flow of infrastructure services continues in the face of a broad range of natural hazards and other disturbances. Community expectations for reliable services is increasing over time, and pressures are mounting as existing assets age and society itself becomes more dependent on the services and products essential to the functioning of our modern economies.

The aim is to find and put in place ways to improve the protection of communities from infrastructure failures by reducing the incidence and severity of infrastructure outages and promoting rapid restoration of services.

A wide range of arrangements to help ensure continuity of infrastructure services are in place and improvements are made by the infrastructure-providing companies and others on an ongoing basis.

Additionally, the inter-dependencies between different infrastructure systems are sometimes overlooked. In common with most businesses, companies that provide infrastructure services themselves rely on energy, telecommunications, transport and water. A failure in one area can cascade into an event with a wider socio-economic impact.

While there will never be iron-clad guarantees, the question is what are the most promising areas to encourage the integration and sharing of information across sectors and to advise on national priorities?

The organisations participating in this joint initiative each have roles in advancing infrastructure resilience, and they are presently working together to consider what might best be done to move resilience forward.

Improved collaboration between all stakeholders (including government, infrastructure companies and others) will be needed. In turn, this suggests strengthened arrangements for shared understanding of infrastructure systems including inter-linkages, vulnerabilities and risks. It also calls for a shared understanding of the roles that the various stakeholders might best play in avoiding risk and in working together when things go wrong.

Professor Tom O’Rourke recently visited New Zealand as a CAENZ Fellow and Fulbright Senior Specialist. Professor O’Rourke is the Thomas R Briggs Professor of Engineering, Cornell University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is internationally recognised for his contribution to geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering and lifelines performance.

While in New Zealand, Professor O’Rourke met a wide range of infrastructure providers and other stakeholders. He also delivered a number of lectures and presentations to groups involved in infrastructure. Copies of the main presentations can be obtained from the Downloads page.

Work is presently underway to consider how best to advance themany ideas raised in Professor O’Rourke’s discussions. This consideration, which will involve other agencies, will progress over the coming months.

The participating organisations also anticipate continued international collaboration and local events. If you want to learn more please contact resilient_infrastructure@caenz.com