Infrastructure Resilience in Extreme Weather Events and Natural Hazards

Dear Colleagues,

Infrastructures are and will be affected by the impacts of climate variability and change, but will also play an essential role in building territorial resilience to those impacts. Infrastructures are a major component of resilience and adaptation strategies. Extreme events illustrate the extent of this potential exposure.

For example, the City of Paris and OECD modelling of the potential impacts of a major flood (called the 1910 exteme event) in Paris found that 30% to 55% of the direct flood damages would be suffered by the infrastructure sector, while 35% to 85% of business losses would be caused by disruption to the transportation and electricity supply and not by the flood itself. In total, 3 to 30 billion euros of damages and 5 millions inhabitants will be affected directly or indirectly. Heat waves and droughts are also of major concern. These phenomena are various and concern many metropolitan areas all around the world.

Ensuring that infrastructure is climate resilient will help to reduce direct losses and reduce the indirect costs of disruption. This issue is hard to be managed for existent infrastructures.

New infrastructure assets should be prioritised, planned, designed, built and operated to account for the climate changes that may occur over their lifetimes. Existing infrastructure may need to be retrofitted, or managed differently, as a result of climate change. Lastly, additional infrastructure, such as sea walls, will need to be constructed to address the physical impacts of climate change.

In this Special Issue, we request high-quality original research manuscripts, which are focused on the presentation of results of the latest research in the field of the modelling and undertanding of infrastructure resilience (bridges, roads, networks, dikes, etc.), their new rules of design and construction, and the analysis of services (water(s), energy, transportant, waste, etc.). Technologies are just as important as decision-making processes and stakeholders.

Tools for mainstreaming adaptation in critical policy areas and encouraging investments in resilient infrastructure include : spatial planning frameworks to redirect development away from high-risk areas; Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessment; and regulation and standards (such as construction codes).

We welcome theoretical and application manuscripts of a high technical standard and of various disciplines. Expooirations of issues related to metropolitan areas are encouraged. We seek high-quality submissions of original research as well as review manuscripts on all aspects related to hazards, climate change concerns, infrastructure construction and management.

Prof. Youssef Diab
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Infrastructures is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• resilience
• hazards related to climate change
• urban infrastructures
• linear infrastructures
• climatic impacts
• decision making processes
• modeling
• structural adaptation
• maintenance
• robustness
• public and local policies