Climate change affects everyone and everything around us, particularly the infrastructure we depend on for our daily activities. The latest IPCC report cycle, the IPCC Six Assessment Report, unequivocally states that climate change is not a future threat but is happening right now.

Trillions of dollars are being spent on infrastructure, from its design to construction to maintenance and upgrade, when it reaches its end of life. The existing built environment is also a complex network of interdependent and interconnected assets. With climate change posing an immediate threat, we urgently need to embed resilience into our 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.

Infrastructure Pathways aims to organise, explain and link key existing information, guidance, and tools from hundreds of sources on climate-resilient infrastructure across the infrastructure lifecycle, providing practical, mutually-reinforcing actions in each phase of infrastructure development and creating a ‘golden thread’ across systems and practitioners.

Infrastructure Pathways is a resource for infrastructure practitioners seeking clear, easy-to-navigate guidance on practical ways to integrate climate resilience into day-to-day practice.

These practitioners consist of the Government, including elected officials, government agencies/authorities and regulators, Owners and Operators of infrastructure, Investors, Designers including planners, architects, engineers, and other consultants, Contractors, and Civits Society consisting of NGOs, community-based organisations, public and private universities and research institutions.

How to use Infrastructure Pathways

The Infrastructure Pathway organises the infrastructure lifecycle into 9 phases: Policies and plans, Prioritisation, Feasibility and preparation, Funding and financing, Design, Procurement, Construction, Operation and maintenance, and End of life.

Each lifecycle phase includes relevant climate resilience guidance, recognising that 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.

“Using Infrastructure Pathways will foster more informed decision-making, improved coordination and better collective impact from practitioners across the infrastructure lifecycle to embed climate resilience into infrastructure. It is a platform, and, in time, a community of practice, for making climate resilience part of day-to-day practice.”

Infrastructure Pathways is an initiative by the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI), led by The Resilience Shift and in partnership with Arup.

Access this enriching resource by visiting the website Infrastructure Pathways.