Building Climate Resilience for Critical Infrastructure: MIRACA’s Journey So Far

As climate change increasingly threatens infrastructure across Europe, the need for robust adaptation strategies has never been clearer. MIRACA is creating a toolkit designed to help operators of critical infrastructure (CI), local authorities, and researchers assess and adapt to multi-hazard climate risks. We are excited to share more about what the project entails, how far it has come since it’s inception, and what’s next!

What is MIRACA?

MIRACA stands for Multi-Hazard Infrastructure Risk and Adaptation Climate Assessment. Its primary objective is to empower those responsible for critical infrastructure across Europe to better respond to the impacts of climate change. Whether it’s flooding, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, earthquakes, or landslides, MIRACA offers a unified approach to tackle these challenges.

The cornerstone of MIRACA is a decision-support toolkit that includes:

• A technical guidance document that lays out strategies for adaptation.
• A decision-support workbench that uses risk assessments and models to evaluate various hazards and their impacts.
• An interactive online visualizer that makes complex data accessible to non-experts, providing an overview of exposure, vulnerability, and risk across Europe.

The Progress so Far

Over the first 18 months of the project, significant milestones have been reached. The project is divided into five phases, and so far, the team has successfully completed the first phase and is well into the second.

• Phase 1: The first nine months were dedicated to identifying gaps in available data and establishing a standardized approach for gathering multi-hazard event data across Europe.
• Phase 2: This ongoing phase has seen major strides in building a comprehensive database of CI exposure and vulnerability. This includes gathering spatially explicit data on critical infrastructure like transportation networks and energy grids. These datasets are crucial for creating risk models that can assess how different types of hazards interact and affect infrastructure at both the asset and network levels.

A significant win is the development of network models for multimodal transportation systems. These models help us understand how infrastructure systems are interconnected and how failures in one system can lead to cascading effects across others—critical for managing risk in an increasingly complex world.

Additionally, work has started on creating the technical workbench and interactive visualization tool. These tools are designed to help infrastructure managers and policymakers make more informed decisions about where to focus adaptation efforts.

Interdependent critical infrastructure modelling framework (example from Great Britain)

What’s Next for MIRACA?

With the backbone of the decision-support toolkit now in place, the next steps involve refining the adaptation strategies already identified. These strategies will be tailored to address multiple hazards and will include recommendations not just for individual infrastructure assets but for entire systems.

In the coming months, expect more progress on:

• The technical workbench: Further development will make it a powerful tool for analyzing how various hazards might affect infrastructure.
• Interactive visualizer: This tool will provide an easy-to-navigate interface for users to explore climate risks, CI vulnerabilities, and adaptation options.

These tools will be especially valuable for public authorities looking to implement climate adaptation strategies in their regions. The visualizer, for example, will allow users to assess the risk to specific types of infrastructure and compare different adaptation measures, guiding decision-making in real time.

Wins in Engagement and Dissemination

MIRACA has also made notable progress in engaging with its target audience. The project’s online presence has grown steadily, with over 1,500 unique users visiting the MIRACA website, and over 40 social media posts resulting in an estimated 19,428 impressions. This digital engagement is key to raising awareness of MIRACA’s tools and findings.

Through participation in conferences and publications, MIRACA has reached a broad audience, including private-sector operators, government agencies, and research institutions. Eight papers have already been published, further solidifying the project’s scientific foundation.

Commitment to Open Science

One of MIRACA’s core principles is its commitment to Open Science. All public deliverables, code, research findings, and training materials will be shared openly, enabling widespread access and collaboration across sectors and disciplines. This commitment ensures that not only can MIRACA’s tools be used widely, but they will also evolve and improve as more stakeholders contribute their insights.

The project’s code is freely available on platforms like GitHub, and key documents have already been made publicly accessible on platforms like Zenodo. This transparency fosters collaboration, improves the quality of the toolkit, and ensures that users from all sectors can easily adopt and adapt MIRACA’s tools.

Final Thoughts: A Framework for Resilience

MIRACA is well on its way to delivering a robust, integrated framework for assessing and managing climate risks to critical infrastructure. The toolkit being developed will allow operators, policymakers, and researchers to visualize risks, understand the interdependencies between different infrastructure systems, and make informed decisions about the best adaptation strategies to implement.

As MIRACA moves into the next phases, the project will continue to refine its tools and expand its reach, ensuring that critical infrastructure across Europe—and potentially beyond—will be more resilient in the face of an unpredictable climate.

Whether you’re a public authority seeking to safeguard your region’s infrastructure or a researcher looking for robust, open data on climate risks, MIRACA is building the tools to support you.