Resilient infrastructure and urban systems
Resilience is about building capacity and adaptability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to challenges and uncertainty, and to recover quickly from disruptions or crises. A resilient infrastructure system can withstand and recover from natural disasters and maintain critical functions, such as transportation or communication.
The purpose of National Infrastructure is to enable the outcomes expected by the citizens and society it serves. However, it cannot effectively fulfil its purpose unless it is systemically resilient. National Infrastructure with lower levels of systemic resilience is susceptible to disruption with greater frequency, on a larger scale, with higher intensity and for longer durations than that with higher resilience. If the infrastructure is not sufficiently resilient, then neither are the outcomes that it provides, and the realisation of all other strategic objectives are jeopardised.
Any nation enabled by National Infrastructure with low resilience is at risk of initiating a downward spiral in which the cumulative impacts of disruptions to National Infrastructure undermine quality of life, reduce productivity and GDP, damage industry and investor confidence, impairing tax revenues and international competitiveness and channelling national resources into responsive expenditure. Whereas, any nation enabled by highly resilient National infrastructure will on average experience a lower frequency, intensity, scale and duration of disruption to the lives of citizens, businesses, communities, and the economy. Thus, highly resilient infrastructure initiates a virtuous cycle because by minimising disruption, a resilient nation becomes a more attractive and lower risk place to live, to do business, and to make investments. Additionally, any nation enabled by highly resilient infrastructure can in the long-term use its resources more effectively by reducing the need for short term ad hoc responsive expenditure, reducing the scale of lost economic activity, and preventing peaks in demand for emergency services during times of disruption.
Resilience is a pillar of UKCRIC’s guiding principles and a key driver which cuts across the research within the Collaboratorium. UKCRIC is driven to develop research which enables:
Transformational infrastructure and urban systems for a changing world
Pioneering methods in infrastructure and urban systems design to meet the challenges of climate change, changing patterns of use, societal expectations, and emergent technologies.
- One of UKCRIC’s guiding Scientific Missions