Tauranga Infrastructure Asset Resilience

When natural hazards pose risks to infrastructure and communities, identifying where to invest often considers the type of asset and hazard in isolation. The Tauranga City Council decided to embark on a project to understand and mitigate a combination of natural threats to their water and transportation infrastructure to enhance their resilience. They reached out to us to help.

We developed—and automated—a tool to prioritize all water and transportation assets. This involved a robust data science exercise focusing on multi-hazard risk exposure to understand the criticality, consequence, and likelihood of potential asset failure during disasters.

We then transformed this data into a web-based application (app), allowing multiple consultants to work in parallel across the city to identify long-term mitigation project opportunities. The app’s collaboration space allowed everyone to work on a single source of data and have access to live updates. Plus, online operations could continue seamlessly during the height of COVID-19 restrictions.

The Council has used this too to develop a 10-year plan of approved mitigation projects and a 30-year, NZ$965 million plan to make Tauranga’s assets more resilient to natural hazards.