Exposure datasets of critical infrastructure for multi-hazard risk assessment and climate adaptation.

Abstract

Critical Infrastructure (CI) provides the essential services to society and represents the backbone of the economy, security, and health. Considerable effort has been made in the last few decades towards the development of exposure datasets of single CI assets (e.g., healthcare, and educational facilities) and assets within more complex networks and systems (e.g., road, rail, ports, power, gas). Such datasets can be used within a synergetic risk assessment framework to evaluate the damages and losses of CI assets and networks due to different natural hazards in a single or multi-hazard environment considering also systemic effects and cascading failures. The usefulness of the available datasets for risk assessment purposes, however, depends on the completeness of the data at systemic level, data quality as well as on the existence of the main attributes (e.g., construction type, material, quality, and cost) necessary for the risk calculations. The paper presents the most important European and global datasets for various CI assets and networks and identifies the existing gaps. This work is developed in the framework of the European research project MIRACA “Multi-hazard Infrastructure Risk Assessment for Climate Adaptation” which aims at creating a Pan-European harmonized database of CI asset exposure and vulnerability in a single-and multi-hazard environment under climate change to enhance CI resilience at different scales considering interdependencies among CI systems.

Published: July 2024.