Climate Risk Pty Ltd

A national collaboration with the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) and the Federal Government funded the development of AdaptWater – the worlds first extreme weather and climate risk analysis tool for financial decision analysis in the water sector. The project worth over $1.2 has now been implemented across over 350,000 water infrastructure assets. Sydney Water use the system to analyse all asset upgrades and new build to ensure that they are fit-for-purpose over their design life. They also sweep their asset base to create a ‘State of Asset Resilience’ for annual reporting.

Seqwater is embarking on major upgrades to one of its most important water supply facilities. In recent events the power supplies to this asset were threatened as they crossed flooding rivers and the fibre systems used for SCADA control were torn up by high velocity river flows. This project involves the local deployment of the XDI Risk Engines to analyse the probabilities of failure of water, power, access and communication assets for the various design options being considered. The system will also quantify the cost of ‘external’ consequences such as economic disruptions and numbers of customers at risk under different options.

Climate Risk has twice been commissioned by Telstra to investigate the threats and opportunities from climate driven policy to the telecommunications sector in Australia. This report was ground breaking in that it shifted the focus from telcos as a high emission sector, to that of low carbon enabler. The Report identified a range of areas on which ICT could facilitate dramatic reductions in emissions for business users as well as facilitating the larger scale uptake of renewable energy. The report has been highly influential – initially presented in Davos, and the picked up by the UN as the basis for technical conferences in Japan and the UK.

This report was commissioned by Zurich to set out a structured conceptual framework by which general insurers could (a) understand the threats to climate change to them and their clients and (b) understand the levers available to them to reduce risk and increase business resilience. This foundational report provides international research that creates a strong evidence base for risk transparency and preventative intervention, arguing that money spent on risk prevention and preparedness delivers a hundredfold return in avoided losses.

A new application of the AdaptInfrastructure Risk Engines applied to 2,500 roads in Sydney’s Northern Beaches in combination with water assets. The pilot project demonstrated that local governments could optimise road designs to provide the best financial performance in light of changing flood, inundation, heat and bushfire risks. The project also uncovered important interdependencies between vulnerable roads and vulnerable water infrastructure in the area – suggesting new operating protocols may be needed and there are opportunities for councils and utilities to collaborate on risk mitigation measures at least cost. The project is now being considered for extension with the Institute of Public Works Engineers Australia.

A project which developed a definitive evidence to show that the resilience of Community Service Organisations is critical to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on vulnerable and disadvantaged people. The report commissioned by NCCARF has been a critical influence on Federal adaptation policy