New York’s critical infrastructure owners gather to advance resilience to climate change

From Hurricane Ida’s record smashing hourly rainfall in New York, which overwhelmed the City’s sewer system and cascaded into subways in 2021, to thousands of people losing power as Storm Boris hit Central and Eastern Europe this summer, maintaining essential infrastructure in extreme weather is a growing challenge globally.

Arup convened the Adapting Critical Infrastructure to Extreme Weather panel at New York Climate Week to help drive the security and resilience of essential services. The multi-sector panel discussed the vital need for infrastructure agencies to collaborate and work together to protect local communities.

Eric Wilson, Vice President, Climate Resilience and Sustainability Planning, with New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) said, “Major infrastructure organizations must break traditional silos and engage in open dialogue with each other to align resilience plans as well as to evolve our urban infrastructure collectively.”

Roopesh Joshi, Acting Assistant Commissioner of NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said, “By collaborating with other city agencies, we are looking to mitigate the impact of intense cloudbursts with green infrastructure assets across the whole city.”

Representatives from National Grid, along with DEP and the MTA also shared examples of major interventions to protect critical infrastructure against extreme weather:

• Modelling where severe flooding is most likely, as well as historical records of flooding and vulnerable areas, helped make $400m of initial investment to manage ‘cloudbursts’ much more effective for the DEP.
• Careful planning from National Grid made a vital difference in protecting residents’ access to power when a bomb cyclone hit New York in December 2022.
• The MTA invested $7.6bn in a risk mitigation program against coastal storm surge to protect its transportation infrastructure after Hurricane Sandy

Ilana Judah, Americas' Adaptation and Resilience Leader at Arup, said, “With extreme weather becoming more frequent and severe, interventions to strengthen critical infrastructure have never been more urgent.

“We brought together essential service owners to share the actions we must take now to build the resilience we need. At Arup, we’re already putting these strategies into action – from using nature-based solutions to help manage stormwater in New York to building whole-system resilience on Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown West Extension.  Now the infrastructure industry needs to work together to keep building resilience in energy, transport, and beyond.”