Wellington region land transport resilience business case

Abstract

The high seismicity, rugged terrain and an increasingly adverse climate exacerbated by climate change mean that the capital city Wellington’s transport system has severe deficiencies in its resilience to natural and anthropogenic hazards. This means that the capital could potentially be cut off from the rest of New Zealand for several months, and individual interdependent cities making up the region could also be isolated from each other. A pioneering resilience strategy and business case were developed by WSP for the New Zealand Transport Agency,and other transport authorities. The strategy involved development of a methodology and assessment of the criticality of the resilience risks, and their prioritisation. This considered the major risks of earthquake, tsunami, landslides and storms, exacerbated by climate change, together with risks to other lifelines utilities such as power, water and telecommunications that shared these transport corridors. Resilience enhancement measures were developed and grouped into programmes to improve resilience for immediate post-event response as well as recovery, in a range of events. Programmes of interventions were compared and prioritised, and on this basis short-, medium- and long-term programmes were developed. The strategy was developed in the face of uncertainty as to the seismicity and climate risks, by developing a suitable robust methodology. This novel resilience business case, the first of its kind, provides a pathway for investment to enhance the resilience of Wellington's transport network. It also provides a framework for development of strategies and business cases to enhance the resilience of infrastructure throughout New Zealand and beyond.