Weather the Coming Storms: Infrastructure Planning for More Extreme Conditions

Conference Registration

Conventional wisdom around asset maintenance teaches us that the useful life of an asset is driven by how well we maintain the asset, but times have changed. Extreme climate conditions and weather events have led to decreasing asset life cycles, increasing need for investments in resilience, growing insurance gaps, increasing costs, and failing infrastructure. With these challenges in mind, governments need to consider what investments should be made today to address future climate risks.

At this session, panelists will discuss the issues that may be keeping infrastructure planning and investment from meeting current and future needs and challenges, with the goal of finding opportunities to develop better and more timely plans for how to invest limited government resources in a changing world.

Learning Objectives

  • Identify the factors that are leading to diminishing asset life cycles.

  • Adapt operating and capital planning processes to account for shorter asset life cycles.

  • Discuss the role of natural assets and how they can contribute to community resilience planning.

  • Examine the issues that are hindering infrastructure planning efforts to meet modern challenges.

  • Find opportunities to develop better and more timely plans to ensure the resilience of communities.