Supporting Critical Infrastructure in Extreme Weather

Restoring essential services is a key challenge in the wake of extreme weather events and the starting point is good data collection.

________________

Fragility of Essential Services

Water at the turn of a tap, light at the flick of a switch, nationwide communication after a few taps on a phone – services we take for granted as part of modern life.

What else do we rely on? Access to emergency services, transport, healthcare, banking transactions, fresh produce from around the motu, not to mention the removal of rubbish and wastewater from our houses.

But all these amenities depend on infrastructure that can be shut off in an instant.

In the summer of early 2023 it took one weather event – Cyclone Gabrielle – to isolate numerous communities from essential services by damaging critical infrastructure.

The Downpour

The rain came down. At some locations on the North Island’s east coast over a quarter of their average annual rainfall fell in 24 hours.

The land came down. The high rainfall caused an estimated 800,000 landslides.

The rivers filled up and carried silt and forest slash out onto the plains.

Bridges, pylons, power poles, water pipes, railway tracks and roads were no match for the volume of water and number of landslides. Critical infrastructure was extensively compromised.

Given the interdependencies between water, power, communication, and transport networks, a system-level understanding of the damage was essential for making good recovery decisions.

Liam Wotherspoon of Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland and Charlotte Brown of Resilient Organisations, leading a team of researchers, proposed a project to gather information about critical infrastructure damage and provide advice for recovery.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment funded the work from its extreme weather science response.

Data Collection for Recovery

Coordinated collection of spatial and temporal data was undertaken to provide a comprehensive picture of the damage to critical infrastructure and the levels of service available over time.

Infrastructure agencies fed data into the project despite being very busy in disaster recovery mode.

The overall aim was to obtain the information required to better understand how Aotearoa New Zealand’s critical infrastructure systems work as an integrated whole and how they can be improved to better withstand future events.

Roger Fairclough, Chair of the New Zealand Lifelines Council, was instrumental in facilitating relationships between researchers and service providers. Students did much of the work.

The remains of the damaged Hikuwai Bridge on State Highway 35 in Tairāwhiti Gisborne and the temporary Bailey Bridge. Image credit: Liam Wotherspoon.

“Collecting data after a damaging event provides the baseline evidence required to support organisations to recover and plan future solutions. This database will be one of the most complete sets of post-event data ever collected in New Zealand.”

Liam Wotherspoon

Example of the status of the road network in Tairāwhiti Gisborne a few weeks after Cyclone Gabrielle. Red= closed. Yellow= reduced service. Image credit: Liam Wotherspoon.

Wisdom from Past Events

Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCoRE researchers are well placed to offer leadership in the face of challenges to infrastructure. Past disaster events, both nationally and internationally, have given them relevant experience.

Insights were gathered from 14 major natural hazard events around the world and a policy briefing was prepared on the key lessons for critical infrastructure recovery.

Opportunity out of Disaster

Rebuilding after disasters provides a key opportunity to strengthen infrastructure networks.

New Zealand’s National Disaster Resilience Strategy defines “resilience” as, “the ability to anticipate and resist the effects of a disruptive event, minimise adverse impacts, respond effectively, maintain or recover functionality, and adapt in a way that allows for learning and thriving.”

The researchers developed a checklist to help decision-makers integrate improvements into the rebuilding of infrastructure.

“Collecting data after a damaging event provides the baseline evidence required to support organisations to recover and plan future solutions. This database will be one of the most complete sets of post-event data ever collected in New Zealand.”

Charlotte Brown

Cyclone Gabrielle will be Aotearoa New Zealand’s costliest non-seismic hazard event ever. With climate change likely to result in more frequent intense weather, we can’t afford not to improve infrastructural resilience to such events.

Liam and Charlotte are pleased that this work provides extensive, real-world evidence that will help Aotearoa New Zealand better value the building of resilience into the critical services that support our communities.

UPDATE:

Critical Infrastructure Recovery

Following the extreme weather events in 2023, researchers from Inter-disciplinary Theme 3 (IP3) have been supporting critical infrastructure recovery through funding from MBIE and the Extreme Weather Research Platform.

The team have just released two reports as detailed companion documents to the policy briefs released last year. The reports step readers through key considerations when undertaking large scale critical infrastructure recovery works and identifying and evaluating resilience intervention options.

Read the reports here:

Resilient Investment Decision Making (PDF)

Critical Infrastructure Recovery (PDF)

Our annual Request for Proposals (RfP) supports eighteen-month, Associate Investigator led research projects that complement the Coordinated Research Projects within the Disciplinary Themes (DT) and Inter-disciplinary Projects (IP) of QuakeCoRE's Research Programme.

The RfP includes Proposal Development Grants which enable early career researchers to develop strong contestable external research proposals.

The annual call for RfP Projects and Proposal Development Grants is held in September / October and is announced on the QuakeCoRE website and in our newsletter.