The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how quickly Australia's infrastructure services can adapt to significant change and rapidly shift to meet community needs.
While this did not prevent the pandemic from having major impacts on all Australians, it revealed the infrastructure sector's resilience and adaptability and presented opportunities to deliver services differently.
New trends emerged in infrastructure operation and service delivery and, in some cases, existing trends were accelerated.
Digitalisation, decentralisation, localism, innovation and adaptability were seen across all the major infrastructure sectors.14
While some trends may be temporary, becoming less important as Australia progresses through the recovery phase, other trends will be embedded and normalised.
The social infrastructure sector demonstrated strong adaptability. The health system rapidly repurposed intensive care unit capacity and adopted technology for service delivery, including telehealth.
The education sector also pivoted rapidly from face-to-face to online services, while taking a significant economic hit from the sharp decline in international students accessing higher education.
The telecommunications and digital sector quickly adopted decentralised operations as it responded to both lockdowns and to population shifts from big cities to smaller towns and regional areas. The sector's response included increasing the adoption of digital collaboration tools and investing more in cloud-based systems and cyber security.
During lockdown periods, patterns of energy consumption became more decentralised, with household use increasing while business use decreased. Lockdowns also strengthened trends towards onsite energy generation and demand for small-scale solar generation.
While impacts on the water sector were less pronounced, consumption patterns became more decentralised as housing demand shifted from inner city areas to the regions.15
For more detail about these and other impacts of the pandemic, see the relevant sector chapters of this Plan and Infrastructure Australia's Infrastructure beyond COVID-19 report.16