About

What is Infrastructure Pathways?

In every region around the world, human populations, environments and the infrastructure they depend on are experiencing the effects of climate change. While climate change mitigation remains urgent and essential to reducing the worst impacts of climate change, the IPCCs Six Assessment Report ^[1] sets out in unequivocal terms that climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today!  All AR6 scenario models show a best estimate in the near term (2021-2040) of a  temperature rise of  1.5°C.^[2] Consequently, new infrastructure assets and systems need to be planned, designed, built and operated for resilience in the face of more frequent and more severe climate events. The existing built environment, a complex network of interdependent and connected assets, must also adapt to the changing climate conditions. Furthermore, infrastructure systems must be viewed not only as providers of essential services but also as enablers of broader societal resilience with both potential benefits and negative consequences to planning and implementation decisions impacting the natural environment, social equity and well-being.

Right now, trillions of dollars of infrastructure is being planned, design, constructed, managed, upgraded or reaching the end of its useful life. If we don’t take a systematic approach to what is needed and how to deliver it, it will be impossible to meet society’s needs for sustainable and resilient infrastructure. While there are many excellent guidance documents, tools and standards designed to help different stakeholders enhance the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate change, the landscape is fragmented and confusing, limiting the impact that practitioners can achieve. ^[3]

Objectives

Infrastructure Pathways:

• Provides clearly differentiated, achievable actions for each lifecycle stage that are coordinated to be mutually-reinforcing
• Links practitioner actions and decisions across the lifecycle to embed and retain resilience value
• Allows targeted access to key information, resources and tools, enabling practitioners to easily find what they need to conduct their work effectively and save time
• Provides consistent, clear format and terminology across the infrastructure lifecycle
• Embeds systems thinking at all stages of project development

Scope

Infrastructure Pathways draws from a resource library comprising over 250 documents from more than 100 different organisations. was collected through a process of collaboration and crowdsourcing from the ICSI membership and recommendations from academic institutions, engineering companies, government bodies, and international organisations with expertise across infrastructure sectors and the value chain of infrastructure.

Infrastructure Pathways’ guidance is sector-agnostic and is intended for use by practitioners working in any infrastructure sector and at any scale of project. Some sector-specific examples and case studies, however, are provided, and sector-specific guidance is referenced where appropriate across the lifecycle. The guidance focusses on climate change adaptation and physical resilience-building in infrastructure assets and systems; however, it takes a holistic perspective in recognising the need to also address climate change mitigation, sustainability, and societal resilience to all types of shocks and stresses.

Infrastructure can be broadly grouped into three overlapping categories^[4] all of which are considered within the scope of Infrastructure Pathways. Together these components form a people-oriented, systemic view of infrastructure with climate resilience requiring adaptation and transformation of all three components:

Who is Infrastructure Pathways for?

The guidance provided in Infrastructure Pathways is intended to be broadly relevant and useful to all geographic, economic and political contexts. Practitioners can, for example:

• check that no critical resilience actions are overlooked before advancing to the next project phase;
• interactively explore resilience actions by lifecycle phase or practitioner group to understand their own role in ensuring resilience, but also interconnections with other practitioners or other lifecycle phases;
• find specific guidance on best practice process for resilience actions, informed by global examples; and
• retrieve a curated selection of relevant resources to build a deeper knowledge base.

Throughout Infrastructure Pathways, the following practitioner groups are referred to as those leading or involved in specific actions or decisions. For the sake of simplicity, the number of categories has been limited by grouping certain practitioners together:

Government (G): National, sub-national and municipal levels of government including elected officials, public servants, and government agencies/authorities including regulators. Also includes intergovernmental organisations (IGO’s) working across governments.

Owners and Operators (OO): Public-sector and private-sector companies that own and/or operate infrastructure.

Investors (I): Those involved in funding or financing infrastructure including public finance institutions (national and sub-national as well as international financial institutions (IFI’s)) and private finance institutions such as banks, infrastructure funds, and private developers.

Designers (D): Planners, architects, engineers, and other consultants involved in the design of infrastructure from conceptual design strategies and planning through detailed design documents and construction specifications.

Contractors (C): National and international construction firms as well as small-scale, local contractors. Construction material supply companies and associated lobbyist groups.

Civil Society (CS): Non-governmental organisations (NGO’s), community-based organisations, public and private universities and research institutions.

In addition to the six practitioner groups listed above, users also support actions or influence decisions in each phase of the infrastructure lifecycle:

Users (U): direct users of infrastructure as well as those individuals and communities impacted by infrastructure development and operation.

The lifecycle framework

The climate resilience guidance summarised in Infrastructure Pathways is organised according to the lifecycle of infrastructure development because infrastructure practitioners tend to work in a specific phase of the infrastructure lifecycle, and the actions that must be taken in each phase are unique and require different guidance and tools for decision-making. The lifecycle framework adopted in Infrastructure Pathways consists of nine phases, grouped into four macro-phases that represent the complete lifecycle of an infrastructure asset or system, forming the structural basis of Infrastructure Pathways.^[5] While the exact order of these phases may vary and often occurs iteratively, the actions and associated practitioners within each phase remain consistent.

Macro-phases:

Needs Identification: Climate risks and development needs are identified, and associated strategies and actions are prioritised. The enabling environment for climate-resilient infrastructure is established.

Planning: Conceptual approaches to delivering a prioritised project are studied from technical, legal, economic and operational perspectives and a delivery plan, including funding and financing, is developed.

Delivery: Design services are procured to develop the technical details for construction and operation. Construction services are procured, and the asset is built for operation.

Management: The asset operates with periodic inspection, maintenance and/or renewal until it reaches the end of its operational life.

Individual lifecycle phases

• Policies and Plans: In this phase, policies and regulations are adopted that align with shared, systemic resilience goals based on an informed understanding of climate-related and other risks. Climate adaptation and resilience strategies are developed and coordinated across geographies, levels of government, and sectors. Together, these set a positive enabling environment for later phases of climate resilient infrastructure development.
• Prioritisation: Governments and other infrastructure owners and developers then prioritise specific infrastructure projects for further development, based on funding and finance availability and political will, and in the face of uncertainty, with the objective of advancing projects that most effectively support long-term climate adaptation and resilience objectives.
• Feasibility and Preparation: Different delivery strategies for achieving a prioritised project’s scope and objectives, including resilience, are explored in this phase from technical, legal and economic perspectives. In this phase, key decisions related to resilience value are made in setting design and operational performance requirements, siting, program and delivery strategy.
• Funding and Financing:  In this phase, a plan for covering the capital and operational costs of climate resilient infrastructure projects is developed through suitable funding and financing mechanisms, with public and/or private capital. It presents an opportunity to incentivise and/or compel the consideration of climate resilience in project development and requires a shift in the industry to facilitate this by considering not only the additional short-term costs of resilience approaches but also the longer-term benefits, including risk reduction.
• Design: The conceptual project idea is developed into a full plan for implementation in the design phase, including the technical details required for safe, high-quality, reliable construction and operation. It requires translating climate resilience performance objectives into specific measures and procedures applied to the asset or system, while also ensuring the integration of flexibility and adaptability to address the inherent uncertainty of climate change.
• Procurement: In this phase, the land, materials, services and/or equipment to deliver an infrastructure project are procured. Integrating climate resilience into the procurement phase requires broadening the typical scope of procurement to consider the wider system and longer timescales in which climate change occurs. It also involves addressing climate risks through procurement including the use of procurement mechanisms, requirements and evaluation criteria that can help facilitate resilience goals.
• Construction: During construction, contractors translate the technical and contractual documents into a physical asset. The contractor is responsible for the supply and quality of construction materials, means and methods, sequence, schedule and overall quality control. Care must be taken to ensure that resilience value is not eroded during this phase due to cost limitations or changes resulting from construction means and methods.
• Operations and Maintenance: In this phase, infrastructure owners and operators, including governments, have an opportunity to incorporate climate resilience into the use of infrastructure, through rethinking traditional approaches to inspections, maintenance, day-to-day operations and emergency response to tackle climate change impacts. There are opportunities to influence the resilience of both infrastructure that was originally designed with resilience in mind and infrastructure that was not, including retrofit strategies to enhance resilience.
• End of Life: At the end of an infrastructure asset’s useful life or when it has become obsolete or redundant, owners and operators have opportunities to maximise the utility of its materials, components and equipment as well as the land it occupies. While these actions do not enhance the resilience of the infrastructure itself, they support broader societal well-being and resilience.