This presentation was made by Matt Crossman, United Kingdom, at the 4th OECD Forum on Governance of Infrastructure, held in Paris on 17 April 2019

1. Strengthening the resilience of infrastructure in the UK
Matt Crossman
April 2019

2. The National Infrastructure Commission
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The NIC is a permanent body which provides the government with
impartial, expert advice on major long-term infrastructure challenges.
The objectives are to:
• support sustainable economic growth across all regions of the UK
• improve competitiveness
• improve quality of life
The NIC commits to delivering:
• a National Infrastructure Assessment once in every Parliament,
setting out long-term infrastructure needs with recommendations
• specific studies on pressing infrastructure challenges
• an annual monitoring report, taking stock of the government’s
progress in areas where it has committed to taking forward
recommendations
Scope is transport, digital, energy, water & waste water, flood risk,
and solid waste. Plus interdependencies and cross-cutting issues.

3. The National Infrastructure Assessment
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The Commission’s plan of action for the UK’s infrastructure over the
next 10-30 years. Recommendations include:
• Nationwide full fibre broadband by 2033
• Half of power provided by renewables by 2030
• Three quarters of plastic packaging recycled by 2030
• £43 billion of transport funding for regional cities
• Preparing for 100% electric vehicle sales by 2030
• Ensuring resilience to extreme drought
• A national standard of flood resilience for all communities by 2050
Alongside these, better design and more efficient funding and financing
can save money, reduce risk and create a legacy that looks good and
works well.
The government has committed to respond to the Commission’s
recommendations and to adopt agreed recommendations as
government policy.

4. Resilience study
The Government asks the Commission to:
a) Review UK and international knowledge and approaches
relating to the resilience of current and future economic
infrastructure systems
b) Develop an understanding of public expectations and
response to the potential loss of infrastructure services
c) Develop an analytical approach that can be used to better
understand the resilience of economic infrastructure
systems, and the costs and benefits of measures to improve
this
d) Undertake pilot analysis of infrastructure systems to
identify actions to improve resilience
e) Make recommendations to government
Two-stage approach with a scoping report identifying the
proposed methods and analysis, followed by a final report,
provisionally by spring 2020.
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5. Resilience study consultation
Four questions:
1. What are the key questions that the next National Infrastructure
Assessment should answer about resilience?
2. On the basis of your response to question 1, what issues should be
prioritised in the resilience study?
3. Are there specific (e.g. policy, knowledge, data sharing or other)
barriers to addressing resilience emerging from cross-sectoral
interdependencies?
4. Are there any examples in which barriers to resilience issues, arising
from sectoral interdependencies or other causes, have been
addressed or overcome?
About 70 responses from researchers, infrastructure operators,
regulators, consultants etc. Still reviewing but key themes include:
• Systems approaches join-up between sectors and barriers
• Valuing resilience
• Changing landscape
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6. Other scoping work
• UK levels of service
• International levels of service
• Analytical frameworks
• Public perceptions of infrastructure resilience
• Expert workshop and development of analytical
approaches
Engagement with other UK and international
organisations & initiatives:
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7. www.dafni.ac.uk
The Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI) is being
created to bridge the gap between academic research, data analysis and
strategic infrastructure planning by:
• Delivering a world-leading platform to support research, analysis and decision
making across the national infrastructure sectors e.g. energy, transport, digital
communications, and water;
• Providing access to advanced compute capability for the analysis and storage of
large scale and diverse infrastructure datasets;
• Facilitating access to state-of-the-art modelling, simulation and visualisation
capabilities to better inform and develop strategic thinking;
• Providing a secure central hub for the UK’s national infrastructure data.

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www.nic.org.uk/resilience