The IFoA has published a policy briefing on resilience in infrastructure projects and how actuarial science could contribute during the development phase.
The IFoA has published a policy briefing on resilience in infrastructure projects and how actuarial science could contribute during the development phase.
The paper identifies key factors behind the need for resilience, such as climate change. It then charts a course for improving resilience, which includes identifying resilience options, devising alternative future scenarios and taking account of extreme events. Actuaries could help project teams to navigate this process by building a resilience analysis framework, choosing scenarios to study and helping select the most suitable of identified resilience options. Key recommendations include:
- The government or the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) should issue guidance on analysing resilience options
- In developing solutions, there should be a focus on balancing ‘quality of life’ impacts against costs
- Comprehensive analysis of resilience options should not be limited to major projects; infrastructure assets are increasingly interdependent
- Where possible, resilience analyses should be released to potential investors.
You can read the paper and a hypothetical case study on the IFoA website at bit.ly/InfraResilience
The paper follows a written response to a NIC consultation in April 2019 and is a part of a programme of infrastructure outputs by the IFoA Policy team and the Infrastructure Working Party, which has included an Infrastructure Finance policy briefing and a roundtable event in partnership with the Aldersgate Group on the importance of climate and other environmental factors for infrastructure investments.
Our policy work on infrastructure is a collaboration between the Policy team and the Infrastructure Working Party. The Working Party is jointly sponsored by the Finance and Investment Board and the Risk Management Board.