INTACT · On the Impact of Extreme Weather on Critical Infrastructures

The resilience of critical infrastructures (CI) to Extreme Weather Events (EWE) is one of the most salient and demanding challenges facing society. Growing scientific evidence suggests that more frequent and severe weather extremes such as heat waves, hurricanes, flooding and droughts are having an ever increasing impact, with the range and effects on society exacerbated when CI is disrupted / destroyed. EWE causing (cascaded) CI outages frequently cause major social and economic loss in disasters. The provisions and procedures to reduce their impact and consequences have often proved inadequate. The probability of exposure to EWE is expected to increase, both in frequency and intensity. Obviously, there is a need to build anticipatory adaptation and organizational resilience to these relatively unforeseen and unexpected EWE impacts on CI.Hence, allowing for future EWE in the design and operational parameters of new and current CI is of fundamental and pressing strategic importance, to ensure cost effective fit, for purpose CI over the lifetime of the assets. There is an obligation to revisit the risk posed to new and existing CI and to develop practical (evidence based) responses by risk-based techniques and a set of validated tools and data sets tailored to practical needs reflecting the level of the risk and the severity of impact (social, economic, environmental, etc.) that would result in CI failure due to EWE.INTACT recognizes that a European-wide coordinated and cooperative effort is required. INTACT is a strong, multidisciplinary consortium and offers a cross disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional systematic approach and a wealth of cutting edge, practical experience across the full range of technical disciplines, geographical regions, climatic conditions and infrastructure types.