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Resilient urban systems:
a socio-technical study of community scale climate change adaptation initiatives
1. Key findings
The Resilient Urban Systems project has sought to understand how community-scale energy and water
systems influence community adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. Because this pilot project
focused on only two case studies, findings are preliminary and should be treated as indicative. Further
research, involving case studies across a broader and larger range of contexts, is needed to verify and
test their validity. Six provisional findings are drawn relating to infrastructure design for climate change
adaptation.
Finding 1:
The resilience of community-scale infrastructure systems, such as water supply or energy
generation, results from the interaction of diverse and context specific technical, institutional and
social ‘enablers’.
Finding 2:
Climate change poses few direct short-term threats to the local energy and water
systems examined. However, both developments also depend on larger energy grid and reticulated
water systems subject to indirect threats from climate events and future change.
Finding 3:
Climate adapted infrastructure requires integration of technical, institutional and social
resilience. Where uncertainty exists regarding future operating conditions, institutional, and social
enablers may prove to be particularly important in ensuring resilience.
Finding 4:
There has been an emphasis on technical resilience in the design of novel infrastructure
systems at the expense of community and institutional enablers of resilience. This may place certain
communities at risk from climate change and other disturbances, particularly where social capital
is weak, and where system designers and investors have limited on-going responsibility for the
functionality of systems.
Finding 5:
Victoria’s current regulatory landscape poses few direct barriers to the replication of the
systems examined but it does restrict innovation in community-scale infrastructure systems.
Finding 6:
Community scale systems potentially provide both advantages and limitations over
conventional centralised systems. Integrating centralised and distributed system models may
maximise advantages and minimise limitations associated with both models. An integrated system
comprising linked provisional infrastructure at multiple scales may offer the best way to build
resilience at all levels - from resource producer to resource user.