A NSW Government program using cutting edge technology to guide Sydney solutions on climate change has won an international award in Germany.
Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) Director of Climate Resilience and Net Zero Emissions, Dr Stephen Bygrave, said XDI Sydney won the German Government's Better Together Award at the International Conference on Climate Change Action (ICCA) 2019 in Heidelberg, Germany, on May 23.
Dr Bygrave said: "This is a good news story about the leadership, collaboration and innovation shown by the NSW Government on climate adaptation through OEH.
"OEH is world-leading in assessing and planning for climate change impacts on critical infrastructure including power supply, communications and transport.
"It is an outstanding achievement for a collaborative project only launched in early 2017 employing cutting edge technology to provide sophisticated risk identification and cost benefit analysis for businesses across Sydney to respond to climate change impacts."
XDI Sydney is a three-year pilot with Climate Risk Pty Ltd trialling AdaptInfrastructure which is a world-first cloud computing technology that brings together geospatial hazard maps, climate change impact projections, engineering data and financial analysis.
Asset managers can now access detailed, real-time insights into hazards, exposure and vulnerability of public infrastructure. Risks can be quantified to show, for example, the number of energy customers affected by a power outage caused by a heatwave.
Climate Risk's Dr Karl Mallon, said: "We're thrilled with the NSW Government's support for the Cross Dependency Initiative and our Climate Risk Engine technology, which is a world first. This partnership with critical infrastructure providers is showing cities around the world how to create safer, climate resilient cities."
XDI Sydney is led by OEH and includes the City of Sydney, Climate Risk, Roads and Maritime Services, Sydney Trains, Sydney Water, Transport for NSW, NBN Co and Northern Beaches Council. XDI's steering committee also includes observers from the NSW Office of Emergency Management, Infrastructure NSW and Defence Australia.
It receives about $1 million in joint funding and achieves benefits including:
- developing a world leading risk quantification tool to better manage critical infrastructure
- improving infrastructure planning and investment decisions based on understanding how climate change will impact different roads, hospitals and schools
- encouraging significant savings from collaborative actions by infrastructure providers to adapt to climate change.
- standardising state of asset resilience reporting, including benchmarking how assets will be impacted by climate change and setting resilience targets.
More information
Climate risk analysis for government and business
