The risks of a changing climate are higher than we assume. Previously we’ve underestimated how deep, widespread, and significant the changes wrought by climate change will be. Large-scale extreme events are easy to imagine, but it’s much harder to discern and anticipate multiple, simultaneous hazards compounding each other year after year. Our infrastructure is struggling with today’s events, let alone the intensifying conditions predicted for the near future - much depends on how we model, understand, and adapt for such conditions.
As the effects of climate change manifest, there’s a growing acceptance that we must prepare ourselves by identifying vulnerabilities in our social, economic, and built environments. The pace, scale, and complexity of the coming changes mean that we must prioritise, rapidly adapting in the most efficient way possible. Yet traditional approaches to resilience aren’t good enough. Standards based on historical climate conditions, or even the use of the previous generation of climate models when science is advancing rapidly, are failing to inform decision-making. Meanwhile, a lack of capacity in climate risk assessment and adaptation planning are hampering progress.
Without improvement, these methods and conditions do not enable resilience. To adapt appropriately, we must embed resilience throughout the project lifecycle. In turn, this requires more systems thinking, through disciplines working together to overcome siloes. We also need to consider climate change and impacts on systems much earlier to ensure project concepts and designs deliver the necessary transformations. Establishing the risks and potential adaptation and resilience opportunities early on gives projects the best possible chance of identifying and enacting optimal solutions in an efficient way. However, this demands a greater subtlety in our modelling and how we appropriate it for different parts of the project lifecycle.
A systems understanding of risks and impacts
Climate change is extremely complex, with multifaceted long-term impacts. It is both slow and sudden, pervasive and specific, blatant and subtle. Much of our knowledge, and all of our projections, rely upon our modelling systems - and modelling complex systems is notoriously challenging. In addition, we are seeing and will continue to see more multi-hazards and compound events, which are not always well reflected by models. Too much is at stake to content ourselves with over-simplistic models and outdated data; inaccuracies could undermine our efforts to adapt and prepare, leaving whole societies vulnerable to events and impacts more widespread, complex, and extreme than they imagined.
Many technical and statistical approaches still treat the past as stationary and unchanging. Particularly with temperatures, where we’ve already witnessed a significant upward trend and seen risks which are beyond the climate projections - for example, the 2022 heatwave in the UK which brought a 40°C day to London and wildfires created the busiest day for the London Fire Brigade since the Second World War. A more accurate assessment demands up-to-date, smarter, more complex statistics or large ensemble climate models, which quickly becomes very complicated (such as those used to deliver Climate Model Attribution studies), discouraging widespread adoption.
Confronting this complexity is daunting. But unless we do so, we cannot optimise our adaptations or develop resilience to it, leaving our societies unduly vulnerable. To confront this vulnerability, we must apply systems thinking across different levels of detail, to empower institutions and businesses alike to understand their vulnerabilities and how best to deploy limited resources to buttress themselves against the worst effects. This integrated, systems-thinking approach tends to produce more optimal, low regret, solutions, because nature itself is a complex system. An integrated approach (as opposed to narrowly combating specific symptoms of climate change) can also reveal opportunities to generate systems-level improvements across the board, so that we can channel effort and investment towards resilience solutions that have a wide range of benefits.
Improved modelling does more than enhance accuracy. It can be the difference between making sustainable, far-sighted investment, and lacking the confidence to act. Greater visibility of risks strengthens the business case and supports sustainable investment. At AtkinsRéalis, our work with multilateral development banks (MDBs) demonstrates the importance of risk assessment in stimulating appropriate investment. For example, when our clients approach us with ideas to improve a city’s water supply, we make use of AtkinsRéalis’ risk assessment tools to analyse their proposals, exploring how greater benefits could be delivered for adaptation, resilience, and benefits across multiple registers of value such as biodiversity gain. By enacting such assessment very early on, prior to feasibility studies, we can establish guidelines and standard frameworks to make sure that these insights meaningfully influence the design and scope of projects. In turn, this can be used to strengthen the business case, often supporting investment in vulnerable communities and developing countries.
Turning theory into real world outcomes
The business case is just the start. To maintain resilience standards, we must integrate monitoring throughout the project, utilising KPIs, collaborative contract models, and digital tools such as common data environments to ensure transparency on performance, so that theory can be proven in practice. Different kinds of monitoring can help to embed change across the project lifecycle. Broadly, impact modelling identifies the changes required, and adaptation modelling tracks their real-world performance, upholding ongoing learning and accountability.
Impact monitoring is about understanding the thresholds beyond which certain events are triggered, and then collecting evidence to demonstrate what the impact of such events would actually be. This can enable the development of Adaptation Pathways: tangible, actionable plans detailing how to respond if certain thresholds are triggered. Agreeing in advance the thresholds, impact indicators, and actions to take in the event of breaching the threshold helps to ensure clear, rapid, and well-evidenced responses to potential crises. In turn, this increases confidence and reduces unnecessary damage to society, infrastructure, and the economy. Linking the right responsive actions to the right triggers requires thorough exploration of a whole range of possible scenarios, reduces uncertainty and inefficiency, but it enables a more suitable response in a sensible, efficient, and effective way.
As well as holding people to account, doing due diligence, and upholding good standards in design, these monitoring mechanisms can lead to further refinements that reduce cost and improve efficiency - but only if we measure success and uphold accountability. Adaptation monitoring tracks promises against delivery. At a time when making claims about climate actions and their effectiveness can impact an organisation’s reputation, this is vital. This kind of monitoring can help to evaluate how successful major investments are in delivering levels of resilience and reducing amounts of loss, strengthening the case for what actually works in practice. Adaptation should lead to a measurable increase in resilience with real-world data, and not just occur ‘on paper’ as a form of greenwashing. With better evidence and learning from past projects, we can then better funnel investment to the projects which are having the greatest impact, refining effective practices and further reducing risk.
Systems, sustained
Already, it’s clear that the costs of failing to rapidly adapt are very high. Unless we apply a holistic, systems thinking approach to adaptation, we will suffer more failures in response to shocks. Costs will escalate and ripple through major projects. Funding will become harder to obtain. Recovery from setbacks will be more arduous and uncertain. Integrated approaches can lower these risks while revealing optimal solutions that address multiple challenges at once. If we can benefit adaptation, biodiversity net gain, mobility in one project through taking a systems approach, we reduce costs and deliver more in terms of outcomes.
Such benefits can only be unlocked through holistic and integrated thinking; if we only consider, say, actions to tackle net zero, we risk spending a lot of money without availing ourselves of potential solutions that also improve resilience and biodiversity. As both regulations and measures of value grow more sophisticated, we must be more strategic about decision making and project design.
Systems thinking unlocks efficiency; but monitoring systems help to lock it in. Both impact monitoring and adaptation monitoring are crucial to maintaining standards and momentum. So much change in such a short space of time is bound to increase uncertainty, disruption, and unexpected consequences; without monitoring, these could significantly hamper our efforts, forfeiting key insights and failing to hold projects to account. A holistic, systems-thinking approach, however, makes it easier to consider and embed these evaluative criteria from the very start. That’s what it really means to be resilient by design.
