Unexpected disasters are causing damage in unlikely places, forcing decision-makers in the public and private sectors to prepare for the most common disasters in their region as well as the rare, once-in-a-hundred-year ones. But strategies exist to help decision-makers prepare for the unexpected.
Across the U.S., the average annual total costs of earthquakes is $14.7 billion, with the average earthquake costing between $1.5 to $3 billion. Adopting the latest seismic resilience codes can make buildings more earthquake-resistant and financial instruments can help communities rebuild quickly.
The Epicenter defines infrastructure as the physical, economic, and social systems central to the functioning of an economy and a society. Resiliency in critical infrastructure is about the ability to withstand extreme climate impacts and recover from them quickly.
The Epicenter defines infrastructure as the physical, economic, and social systems central to the functioning of an economy and a society. Resiliency in critical infrastructure is about the ability to withstand extreme climate impacts and recover from them quickly.
In the 1980s, the U.S. went an average of four months between billion-dollar disasters. In 2024 and 2023, the U.S. experienced one every other week. Between 2011 and 2024, 99.5% of congressional districts across the U.S. experienced at least one federally declared disaster declaration for an extreme weather event. As the time between disasters shrinks and costs rise, protecting assets and reinforcing critical infrastructure is becoming more urgent.
The Epicenter defines infrastructure as the physical, economic, and social systems central to the functioning of an economy and a society. Resiliency in critical infrastructure is about the ability to withstand extreme climate impacts and recover from them quickly.
The Epicenter has highlighted 10 key categories of critical infrastructure that are modeled most closely to the framework developed by researchers Diane Henshel and Jeffrey Ashby. These 10 categories also incorporate the 35 industries included in Tailwind’s Taxonomy for Adaptation and Resilience Investments, but bucket them differently.
Here are The Epicenter’s 10 Critical Infrastructure Categories:
The descriptions below offer a brief overview of each category. The Epicenter's Resilient Critical Infrastructure page offers a more robust overview of these ten critical infrastructure categories, in an effort to facilitate an aligned ecosystem discussion about the solutions emerging to build resiliency across each category. For each, we highlight opportunities and obstacles present in the current environment, and offer some examples of the types of solutions that are emerging to foster resiliency within the infrastructure category.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Natural Resources, Water, Land, and Air refers to solutions that use and manage natural resources—including water, land, and air—to strengthen community resilience and enable communities to bounce back better from climate hazards.
Effective land use can reduce a region’s vulnerability to threats like fires and floods. For many, natural resources are considered assets, but it’s their community-driven stewardship that ensures they can remain a type of infrastructure that communities can rely on in the face of growing climate threats and disasters. Non-extractive stewardship of other natural resources, like earth metals from mining, can also strengthen resilience and provide economic opportunities for communities.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Food and Agriculture refers to approaches to a complete food system that advance local food sovereignty, strengthen a community’s self-sufficiency in food and agriculture, and improve access to food during climate stress, especially for a community’s most marginalized. When communities gain greater control over their food production, they become more resilient to shocks in the supply chain caused by climate events.
The entire agriculture and food supply chain (food production, storage, processing, distribution, retail, and consumption) must be transformed to better respond to acute disasters and chronic stressors, withstand more significant environmental variability, and endure heightened uncertainty while protecting the food and agricultural workforce.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Healthcare and Emergency Services refers to healthcare services for a community during both acute disasters and chronic climate stressors that are 1) comprehensive in the services offered, 2) consistently and equitably available, and 3) resilient to the shocks and disruptions of climate stressors.
Federal agencies like FEMA or major nonprofit organizations like the American Red Cross play an important role in healthcare and emergency services, especially in the aftermath of disasters, but so do local organizations, community healthcare systems, mutual aid networks, and other healthcare services that support communities—whether in the wake of an acute disaster or amidst more chronic hazardous weather events. Both the slow-moving and sudden effects of climate change can exacerbate the burden and amplify the stresses on the healthcare system. Simply put, extreme weather events put greater pressure on a national healthcare system that is already vulnerable.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Financial Services and Tools refers to the suite of financial infrastructure (from services to tools) that provide a community with the options and resources to 1) build long-term resilience into their communities and 2) respond to the effects of climate change.
At a household level, this includes access to banking services like credit, risk prediction tools, and forms of insurance. At a community level, this includes access to financial resources to invest in resilient community infrastructure, community wealth-building funds, and other incentives, rebates, and financial resources that expand a community's economic resiliency.
Financial services and tools can soften the blow of climate shocks, preserving wealth, protecting key assets, and getting communities back on their feet after a disaster.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Energy refers to reliable and resilient access to energy.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Reliability refers to the ability of a power system to withstand instability, uncontrolled events, cascading failures, or unanticipated loss of system components so as to consistently deliver power to homes and buildings. Meanwhile, Energy Resilience refers to the ability of the grid, buildings, and communities to withstand and rapidly recover from power outages and continue operating with electricity, heating, cooling, ventilation, and other energy-dependent services. Accordingly, energy resilience is a means to increase energy reliability.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Transportation refers to the physical infrastructure and the ecosystem of services supporting a community’s human and commercial transportation.
This category goes beyond physical infrastructure (from roads, bridges, rail systems, and waterways) into the ecosystem of services that enables communities to move between places. For example, this might include companies and government agencies that provide transportation, public and private transportation planners, transportation agencies and funders, and local organizations that are helping to strengthen the mobility, access, and transportation of a community.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Real estate, Housing, and Shelter refers to the set of resources, solutions, and physical places that provide community members with access to affordable, consistent, and climate-resilient housing.
Resilient real estate includes new construction that is built with climate-resilient principles and building codes, as well as existing housing stock and commercial real estate that has been retrofitted and upgraded to integrate climate-resilient improvements. Meanwhile, emergency shelter and robust shelter-oriented disaster preparedness is another key aspect of infrastructural resilience.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Communications, Internet, and IT refers to consistent and reliable access to technology that enables communication, coordination, and an expanded set of opportunities available to communities.
This includes everything from reliable access to broadband internet to consistent cell phone coverage. From a resiliency perspective, communications infrastructure also needs to be quickly repairable after a climate disaster, to reduce the impacts of long-term outages.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Jobs and Education refers to a community's human capital, comprising its economic opportunity and prosperity through jobs and education, as well as its social safety net and services.
A resilient community has stable employment with strong wages, job growth, an educated workforce, and a strong social safety net and services that support households (such as available childcare). Communities that are strong economic engines have a form of “human capital infrastructure” that supports them and increases their capacity to be resilient.
The resilient critical infrastructure category of Community and Social Cohesion refers to the way a community comes together to mobilize community resources, coordinate efforts, and provide an informal safety net of resources and support.
Community and social cohesion is one of the least tangible forms of critical infrastructure, but it serves as a glue that binds together the other nine forms of critical infrastructure into a cohesive whole that drives community resilience. Resilient Cities Network describes social cohesion as being founded in “the strength of social relationships, characterized by the presence of trust and participation among individuals within that society.”
Have suggestions for additional solution examples to include? Or feedback on our framing of these categories? Send us your thoughts!
If $1 invested in disaster prep saves $13, then it's clear investing in preparedness produces a higher ROI than recovery. But what does that preparation look like? An interview with Nanotech Materials offers an example of resiliency in the category of fortified roofing and building materials.
If each $1 invested in disaster preparation saves $13 in economic costs, damages, and cleanup, then it's clear that investing in the preparation for climate-related catastrophes produces a higher ROI than just focusing on recovery alone. But what, exactly, does that preparation look like?