Thu 25 Jan 2024 - As the threat of significant climate change gathers momentum, the resilience of all kinds of buildings and infrastructure is becoming increasingly important, both in the UK and overseas. This means that the owners of these assets, including institutional investors, need to pay more attention than in the past to the potential impacts from storms, floods, landslips and high temperatures.
The meeting will discuss a paper written by four members of the Infrastructure Working Party on managing resilience that is available to read on tandfonline.com: Managing infrastructure resilience and adaptation.
Among other things, the paper considers how to plan for climate change having adverse impacts at different future times, and whether or not it is worth incurring increased expenditure on new assets in order to make them more resilient. There is also a list of recommendations to improve the resilience of assets that already exist. A point of time may arrive when the risks to an infrastructure system’s performance increase to such an extent that it needs significant action to adapt it and set it off along a new path.
Governments will need to think carefully about critical infrastructure and how to deal with chains of resilience, whereby a failure in one infrastructure system can have “knock on” effects on another. Infrastructure operators must ensure that the cyber systems they use to control operations are as resilient as possible. Because failures from any cause are sometimes bound to occur, despite every precaution, recovery plans will need to be robust.
Along with three other members of the Infrastructure Working Party, I’ve written a longer article discussing these principles with examples: Managing infrastructure resilience and adaptation
Thanks are due to the IFoA for enabling the article to be made available free to everyone on an open access basis.
You can view the recording of this webinar on the IFoA’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Watch recording.
An actuary by profession, I have been the chief executive of several of the largest pension schemes in the UK, in both the public and private sectors. My skill-set includes institutional investment and risk management.
From 1998-2019 I led the risk-management initiative between the actuarial and civil engineering professions. This resulted in the publication of the RAMP Guide, which deals with the management of risks in major projects, including the strategic and financial aspects. The 3rd edition emphasises the need for systematic management of uncertainty and of the social and environmental risks in major infrastructure projects around the world. In 2017 we published Major Infrastructure Projects: Key Front-end Issues, which sets out a check-list of 82 issues that need to be considered deeply by senior people involved with new projects. In 2021 I prepared some of the evidence on resilience which the actuarial and civil engineering professions submitted to the UK Government.
For the last 7 years I have been the chairman of the Infrastructure Working Party of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, which aims to explore the risks and returns for financial institutions that invest in infrastructure.
Evangelia is a life assurance actuary with experience in regulatory frameworks and financial modelling.
She has worked in different projects within Europe for the implementation of capital regimes and profitability standards. With quantitative modelling and risk management background, Evangelia is interested in the research of applications in different fields.
Currently, she is working on measuring cybersecurity risk, using quantitative methods. She is a member of the Infrastructure Working Party of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK).
Monica Rossi is an investment professional with over 10 years’ experience across asset management, multi-management, investment product development and balance sheet optimisation in emerging markets. She has also served on various investment committees for alternative investment funds. She holds an honours degree in Actuarial Science specialising in Quantitative Finance, and the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certification. Monica is enthusiastic about sustainable finance, impact investing and the role of innovative finance in mobilising private capital for sustainable investment. She is a member of the Infrastructure Working Party of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK).
Kumar Sudheer Raj is an Assistant Professor in Actuarial Science area at the Institute of Insurance and Risk Management promoted by IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India).
He has work experience of more than 12 years and specializes in teaching Financial and Actuarial Mathematics.
He holds MSc Actuarial Science degree and is a member of the Infrastructure Working Party of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK).
Nico Aspinall FIA is the former Chair of the Resource and Environment Board of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (the IFoA) and previously Chaired the Research sub-committee of the Board. Nico has co-authored a number of papers for the IFoA considering the impact of Climate Change, Resource Depletion, Sustainability, Systems Thinking and the Financial system on the actuarial profession and its clients. He also co-authored the IFoA’s policy briefing on managing the risk and uncertainty around climate change.