InPRHA Webinar: Title: Assessing and Predicting the Cascading Impacts of Natural Hazards on Critical National Infrastructure

About:

The scale of impacts from climate extremes isn't just determined by the hazards themselves; it's shaped by the physical interconnections between phenomena, and by how those impacts compound across space and time, and cascade through our built infrastructure systems and networks. As our climate warms rapidly, these interconnected and cascading events and the risks they pose are projected to increase in both severity and frequency. Yet current approaches to predicting, assessing and managing these risks typically ignore the interactions between them, in part or in full. As a result, the possible magnitude of their impacts, and the true nature of risk, can be significantly underestimated.

The IPCC’s latest assessment report identified these ‘complex hazards and risks’ as the largest gap in climate adaptation knowledge. This presentation will explore some of the latest approaches towards identifying, assessing and predicting interconnected compounding events and their cascading impacts. It will draw on findings from ongoing Scottish, UK and international activities and initiatives focused on these complex interconnections, and explore how systems thinking is being implemented, including in the UK climate change risk assessment released in 2026 (CCRA4).

This webinar will explore the cross-sectoral cascading impacts of extreme weather events on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) as a case study, evidencing the interconnected vulnerabilities across energy, water, transport and telecommunications. Using Storm Éowyn from 2025, cross-sectoral disruptions and impacts on Scotland's CNI are examined through a co-designed workshop and survey. We identify key dependencies on electricity and telecommunications infrastructure, providing vital evidence to inform future preparedness strategies for climate-resilient CNI.

The talk will close with examples of recent assessment advances, the development of new multi-hazard scenarios that consider physically plausible worst-case combinations of events, and the move towards multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) that incorporate systems thinking and interconnected risks.

Speaker: Christopher White, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK