The UK needs to make greater use of data, monitoring and connected systems to protect critical infrastructure from increasingly extreme weather, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has warned.
The engineering body said infrastructure operators need to prepare for a “domino effect” in which extreme weather or the failure of one system triggers disruption across others.
Its warning comes in a new report, Preparing the UK for More Extreme Weather, which argues that much of the country’s infrastructure remains designed around historical weather patterns and individual hazards, rather than combinations of extreme events.
The risk is particularly acute as critical infrastructure becomes increasingly interconnected. A failure in the power network, for example, could disrupt telecommunications and digital services, while also affecting water supplies, refrigerated food and healthcare.
IMechE is calling for new and existing infrastructure to be stress-tested against future scenarios involving combinations of heat, flooding, drought and storms.
It also wants operators to map their dependencies on power, water, digital systems, transport, suppliers and workers to identify potential single points of failure.
Technology is already being used in some infrastructure systems to identify emerging risks.
Denmark’s rail operator Banedanmark is using sensors, asset data and information from incidents and near misses to identify when infrastructure performance is beginning to deteriorate. The information is helping the operator make investment decisions as risks evolve.
The approach illustrates how connected monitoring can allow infrastructure operators to move towards anticipating problems rather than responding only after an asset has failed.
Similar systems-based thinking is being applied in other sectors. The NHS has mapped how climate risks could cascade through data centres, telecommunications, energy and healthcare, resulting in measures including backing up critical data across different locations.
At Heathrow, meanwhile, climate projections are being used to create operational scenarios showing how extreme weather could affect the airport and how teams could respond.
“The biggest risk we face may not be one extreme event, but several occurring in series and many things going wrong at once – particularly the failures that cascade from one system into another,” said Tim Fox, Chair of the IMechE Climate Change Adaptation Working Group.
The report calls for climate adaptation to be treated as a national security priority, including by transferring responsibility for protecting critical infrastructure to the Cabinet Office.
IMechE also wants critical infrastructure operators to report on their preparedness for climate change and greater investment in climate data, research and collaboration.
The organisation argues that infrastructure should increasingly be designed to adapt as climate risks change, rather than relying on a single assessment of future conditions.
The Thames Estuary 2100 flood management plan is cited as an example, using monitoring and defined decision points to determine when additional flood protection is required.
For IoT and connected infrastructure, the findings point to a growing role for sensors and asset data in climate adaptation. As infrastructure systems become more interconnected, monitoring the condition of individual assets could help operators identify vulnerabilities before local failures develop into wider disruptions.
“The question is no longer simply ‘Can this asset withstand a flood or a heatwave?’” Fox said. “It is ‘Can the system continue to provide the service people depend on when several things go wrong at once?’”
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