Multi-Hazard Resilience Estimation and Planning for Interdependent National Infrastructure Networks

Large-scale failures to critical national infrastructures (electricity, transportation, water, etc.), due to extreme weather events, have highlighted the need for understanding systemic risks to such infrastructures and their subsequent consequences to society, businesses and industry. The flooding and storms in UK in 2007 and 2013-14 provide evidence of the severity of such problems. Though systemic risks are important, multiple reports, including the Department for Transport's Resilience Review in 2014 highlight the lack of understanding and accountability for a network-of-networks approach to national infrastructures, with limited knowledge of systemic vulnerabilities and risks across interdependent infrastructures.
Hence it is timely to develop system-of-systems national infrastructure models that inform risk assessment and resilience planning. This program of innovation proposes to develop innovative tools to support this development.
The key objective of this program of innovation is to create a spatial analysis toolkit that combines data and models for multi-hazard risk and resilience estimation of interdependent national infrastructure networks. The toolkit will be used to assess and communicate risks to electricity (transmission and distribution), transport (road, rail, air and sea) networks for Great Britain and water (distribution) networks for Scotland.
Through the participation of key stakeholders this program of innovation is translation-focused, has high innovation potential, is timely with high potential impact, provides value for money, and above all is relevant to the industry.
The key stakeholders supporting this program of innovation include ARUP, Department for Transport, HR Wallingford, HS2, and Scottish Water, who are strategic partners with the NERC ERIIC program. Also JBA Group, a key environment consultant is involved. Project stakeholders will harness the innovation from this project to enable better targeting of resources for risk reduction and resilience planning for the critical national infrastructure.

The NERC stakeholders involved in the program of innovation benefit in several ways. They are as following:
1. Arup - will benefit, through the process of knowledge transfer, by developing a capability in performing system-of-systems based risk and resilience analysis of infrastructure systems at the national scale. This capability will be of interest to their clients and as such, will provide them a competitive advantage in their domain.
2. Department for Transport - will benefit by developing of more comprehensive understanding of the risks of failure of national transportation network systems. The project will provide evidence to target investments in risk reduction and support robust policy making.
3. HR Wallingford - will benefit by developing an application of their combined fluvial and coastal spatial flood risk model with a national, system-of-systems infrastructure risk and resilience model. In doing so, they will develop capabilities within their organization to perform timely and important analyses.
4. HS2 - will benefit by developing a greater understanding of the risks of failure and potential resilience measures that are appropriate for their business. This will provide new evidence to inform decision making of large value investments.
5. Scottish Water - will benefit by developing a more comprehensive understanding of the risks of failure of their asset base. In addition to this, through knowledge exchange, they will develop skills and expertise on this area within their organization.

Outside the NERC ERIIP stakeholder,the partner JBA will benefit from the flood risk assessment emerging from this research as it will showcase the value of JBA models to existing and prospective clients of JBA.