Infrastructure and Climate Resilience e-learning course

Background

Infrastructure systems underpin societies and economies all over the world. Infrastructures are the very systems that enable societies to function: providing potable water supply, electricity, telecommunications, and transport mobility, amongst others. Consequently, appropriate planning of infrastructure systems plays a fundamental role in driving a sustainable and resilient economy in the face of future uncertainty. 

Course objectives

• Recognise the role that infrastructure plays in underpinning global development agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement
• Utilise the NISMOD tool to evaluate the current performance of infrastructure systems and assess future demands for a case study nation of St Lucia, and develop your own strategy to achieve national sustainability and/or emission targets
• Calculate infrastructure asset risk and vulnerability from climatic hazards, and assess how disruptions and damages can directly and indirectly propagate through networks, and apply this knowledge to the Ghana case study
• Understand the different approaches available for decision-making und future climate and socio-economic uncertainty
• Recognise how nature-based solutions can protect, complement or substitute grey infrastructure systems in underpinning sustainable and climate-compatible growth.

Course modules

The course is delivered in three main modules:

1. Infrastructure for sustainable development: Contextualises infrastructure systems within key global agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, and describes approaches for setting national visions and targets and how those may be achieved with particular strategies.  
2. Infrastructure for climate resilience: Examines the nature of current and future climate risks to infrastructure systems and services and how these can be modelled and assessed, and concludes with providing different approaches of how to make decisions for infrastructure resilience in the face of climate and socio-economic uncertainty.  
3. Nature-based solutions for sustainable, climate-compatible development: Assesses the opportunities for nature-based solutions to protect, complement or substitute grey infrastructure service delivery in order to underpin global development agendas. 

The course closes with a lecture on the role of the enabling environment in planning and implementing sustainable infrastructure systems, before the final lecture where the whole course is summarised, and key recommendations of actions are made.