Since 2016, the infrastructure sector has made progress in considering resilience in a systemic sense, but there are still obstacles. There needs to be more effort to better implement sustainability and resilience in infrastructure design, operation and maintenance.
Some of these factors are already considered in formal decision-making and investment frameworks and guidelines. However, a lack of clear guidance, expertise, consistency and data means this does not translate into practical application. Part of the problem is limited guidelines and tools for providing consistency or incorporating risk-reduction measures into project design and investment decisions.
Decision-makers need incentives to look beyond short-term value (which can transfer systemic risk from one part of the system to another) and recognise the long-term value of sustainability and resilience. This issue is a focus in this chapter and changes to the Infrastructure Australia Assessment Framework arising from a recent review.10