Resilience in Civil Infrastructure: Designing for Natural Disasters

Abstract

Climate change has directly affected the increasing intensity and frequency of natural disasters, hence resilient civil infrastructure is essential to climate changes. Within this paper, the principles and approaches to resilient infrastructure systems will be defined. A closer look will be taken to examine suitability in modularity, redundancy, adaptability and community engagement. The learning from analyzed failures of the past, risk assessment approaches, state-of-the-art innovations such as digital twins, self-healing materials, among others, can be synthesized and can help to promote infrastructure systems' robustness and sustainability. The retrofitting of predominate existing infrastructure systems along with integration of living systems are among the most effective, efficient, low-cost and environmentally compatible methods to adopt and develop further towards zero-loss structures. Inclusive processes help to prove that it is possible treating resilience planning fairly to every community member. Most of the discussed and further outlined processes focus on equity to protect both climate vulnerable and naturally vulnerable areas and the communities living those. By collating state-of-the-art technology, advancements, progressions and future goals, this paper aims to help with one of the many scientific approaches of producing more resilient, adaptable to change infrastructure systems in an environmentally aggressive future.