Climate risk and hydrology vital infrastructure focus

Understanding the science of climate risks is one thing. More importantly, how can that information be used to make better decisions and support communities across Australia to become more resilient?

Climate risk looks at a range of issues and hazards. Every hazard is different regarding its impact and losses on assets, infrastructure, populations, and society. Understanding each element of climate risk from a scientific viewpoint is critical. Still, more important is to understand how risks manifest within local contexts, whether in different sectors and industries or across government jurisdictions.

As part of that, Professor Seth Westra from the University of Adelaide has studied the fields of climate risk and water resources and how the two combine. His inspiration to explore these issues dates to his high school days when he developed a visceral first-hand understanding of climate risk and hydrology.

Discovering climate risk

“In Year 10, my family spent a little over six months in Zimbabwe. I did my work experience there with an organisation called Plan International. While working with them, I got the chance to accompany Plan International staff on visits to local communities, to help better understand the community’s needs and aspirations. The things that consistently came up were enhancing access to education and water,” said Westra.

Plan International is a not-for-profit organisation that tackles the root causes of poverty, supports communities through crisis, campaign for gender equality and help governments do what’s right for children. While in Zimbabwe, Westra discovered that the local utility would regularly turn off the water supply for days at a time, warning residents that they would need to fill buckets and bathtubs ahead of the weekend.

“This experience showed me the importance of social and environmental issues while also being interested in technical problems. That’s how I wound up in environmental engineering and on some of the challenges I study today,” said Westra.

Practical water resources challenges facing Australia today

One challenge Westra is looking to focus on is better managing climate risk. He has focused primarily on water resources and the risk to the natural resources across Australia.

“In my early career, I spent a bit of time trying to understand the projections from climate models to devise more concrete advice around those risks,” said Westra. “More recently, I’ve become more interested in how we use this information to make better decisions and support communities to adapt to changes, manage risks and find alternative solutions.”

This research has seen him move sideways into the energy and agricultural spaces. His goal is to develop the frameworks and tools to support industries and communities in dealing with the uncertainties around climate risk.

“We are at a point where we see much more of what is happening because of climate change in real-time. People are far more trusting in the projections than a decade ago. They broadly accept that things will become more extreme regarding our weather patterns,” he said.

Westra noted that where water is concerned, both sides of the extreme weather coin are being impacted.

“We can certainly say that the fingerprints of climate change are on many of the things we observe today. Much of that is consistent with what scientists have been saying over the last twenty years or so. It’s not so much that the science is fundamentally changing anymore. It is more that the evidence base continues to strengthen,” said Westra.

Modelling changes provide incremental improvements

While some industries have heralded the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and machine learning, Westra has not found the same impact on hydrology and climate risk.

“There is often the narrative that AI will solve our problems. While it may lead to some incremental gains, there are probably more important areas we need to focus on,” he said. “It’s not that there won’t be areas where ‘big data’ and AI can help. One area that has grown a lot is improved spatial understanding. It helps us get more precise and granular information regarding land use, human behaviour or other risk factors.”

While modelling has slowly improved, the whole approach to conceptualising and managing our infrastructure and built environment is also changing. This places new demands on how we develop our models.

“Take the urban environment,” he said. “What we are increasingly seeing in urbanisation is this idea of nature-based design or water-sensitive urban design. We are trying to increase infiltration, create natural and artificial storages like artificial wetlands, and ultimately emulate natural processes. We are trying to recover some natural hydrology within urban areas.”

This approach is an ongoing trend that has many benefits. An additional benefit becoming increasingly apparent is its capacity to mitigate climate risk.

“We should take inspiration from recent trends in water-sensitive urban design to generate more positive opportunities for people and the environment,” said Westra.

What is exciting for the field in the future

One area that excites Westra is the increased combination of technical and non-technical perspectives to better integrate the human element into how we develop our technologies. The shift from a very technical perspective towards a more holistic approach is helping define challenges in the first place before models are touched.

“With the diverse range of stakeholders, it creates an opportunity to look at the boundaries and objectives of the problem. In my experience, models are typically created based on what is already there or what people are comfortable with. A better solution approach is to be more rigorous in defining the study parameters to determine what is being solved. Sometimes it isn’t even a scientific problem. It might be a discussion of values, which opens solutions around other areas. That leads us to think about how we blend all the processes to have a system that ultimately is centred on creating positive outcomes for people,” said Westra.

Ultimately, he believes there is enormous potential in a more holistic approach to problem-solving, including incorporating knowledge from local groups, First Nation communities and other knowledge bases.

“I think there’s a lot of opportunity to do better than we have. There’s been a natural fragmentation in water between the engineers and scientists on one side and social scientists on the other. We need to get much better at investing in people and systems willing to bridge these disciplinary perspectives and be able to look at problems and opportunities from many angles.”