1 00:00:02,070 --> 00:00:10,800 Good afternoon and welcome to your smart high school, welcome to the second of our series on shaping the future. 2 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:19,810 Soft saying we have Professor Jim Hall. Jim is professor of Climate and Environmental Risks at the School of Geography and Environment. 3 00:00:19,810 --> 00:00:25,290 Eight years, he was director of the Environmental Change Institute here at Oxford. 4 00:00:25,290 --> 00:00:30,660 His research focuses on management of climate related risks in infrastructure systems, 5 00:00:30,660 --> 00:00:37,170 in particular relating to various dimensions of water security, including both flooding and water scarcity. 6 00:00:37,170 --> 00:00:41,760 He's a member of the UK's Independent Committee on Climate Change Adaptation, 7 00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:48,720 fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a contributing author to the Fourth IPCC Assessment. 8 00:00:48,720 --> 00:00:53,220 He leads the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium, 9 00:00:53,220 --> 00:01:00,540 which has developed the world's first national simulation models for appraisal of infrastructure investment and risks. 10 00:01:00,540 --> 00:01:09,090 So we are in good hands for tonight's question whether we're on the road to somewhere for Jim to tell us about resilient infrastructure, 11 00:01:09,090 --> 00:01:24,940 for sustainable development. Thank you, Jim. Thanks very much indeed for that introduction, and it's a great pleasure to be here. 12 00:01:24,940 --> 00:01:33,940 The title of my talk betrays the fact that in my youth I was a big talking heads fan and I still am, I suppose. 13 00:01:33,940 --> 00:01:40,780 And by twisting the anthem of a road to nowhere. 14 00:01:40,780 --> 00:01:48,730 I'm trying to kind of draw attention that the notorious power plants and highways, 15 00:01:48,730 --> 00:01:58,420 which we see as being part of the problem with respect to sustainability, may also be part of the solution. 16 00:01:58,420 --> 00:02:09,640 But having settled on this title a couple of weeks ago, I came across this book and by David Goodhart, who got there first. 17 00:02:09,640 --> 00:02:17,980 So clearly Road to somewhere is not going to be the title of the book I'm writing at the moment. 18 00:02:17,980 --> 00:02:29,590 David Goodhart book is is not about infrastructure, as the subtitle indicates, it's about the politics of place. 19 00:02:29,590 --> 00:02:38,410 But as we saw in the election campaign and subsequently in this government's priorities, 20 00:02:38,410 --> 00:02:46,510 actually, infrastructure has quite a lot to do with the politics of place at the moment. 21 00:02:46,510 --> 00:02:57,360 How we invest in transport for the North, whether HS2 should go ahead or not, how do we provide 5G coverage universally? 22 00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:04,020 The fact that infrastructure is deeply political is is nothing new. 23 00:03:04,020 --> 00:03:15,030 It involves deploying very large sums of capital. There's plenty of opportunities for political patronage and corruption even. 24 00:03:15,030 --> 00:03:25,230 And this issue of The Economist in 2017 discussed the role of infrastructure, amongst other political interventions, 25 00:03:25,230 --> 00:03:39,590 policy interventions in addressing disadvantage and political malaise in America's Rust Belt and in the north of Britain. 26 00:03:39,590 --> 00:03:50,460 And one of the conclusions of this analysis that it was that infrastructure on its own is not enough to address 27 00:03:50,460 --> 00:03:59,490 the economic issues which are brought about by industrialised globalisation and changes to industrial structure. 28 00:03:59,490 --> 00:04:10,680 In fact, the the economic geography of Paul Krugman and Tony Venables here in Oxford illustrates that all other things being equal 29 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:17,910 if if two places if one has comparative advantage over another financial services in London versus the north of England, 30 00:04:17,910 --> 00:04:25,740 then creation of better connectivity will advantage the south rather than the the north. 31 00:04:25,740 --> 00:04:36,060 And it takes a very big push to shift that into another equilibrium. 32 00:04:36,060 --> 00:04:44,940 So what the this issue of the economist went on to argue is that infrastructure on its own is not enough. 33 00:04:44,940 --> 00:04:53,040 You need a set of complementary policies, including skills, education, housing, alongside infrastructure. 34 00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:58,950 If you're going to have any hope of shifting the economic geography. 35 00:04:58,950 --> 00:05:07,530 Similar questions around the relationship between infrastructure and the economy come from this picture here, this comes from along the bottom here. 36 00:05:07,530 --> 00:05:15,540 We've got the World Economic Forum's score for the quality of infrastructure on the top. 37 00:05:15,540 --> 00:05:26,100 We've got on the on the vertical axis, we've got GDP per capita in the World Economic Forum's infrastructure pillar raises a whole load of questions. 38 00:05:26,100 --> 00:05:33,190 People joke that it comes from asking questions to businessmen who travel through an airport to a capital city. 39 00:05:33,190 --> 00:05:38,790 There is more data to it than that, but there is some subjective surveying. 40 00:05:38,790 --> 00:05:43,080 What you see, though, is that there is there's clearly a relationship here. 41 00:05:43,080 --> 00:05:47,970 The big question is which direction does the causality go? 42 00:05:47,970 --> 00:05:52,590 And is infrastructure lead to economic development? 43 00:05:52,590 --> 00:05:56,520 Or does economic development provide the resources for infrastructure? 44 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:04,170 And the answer is, of course, it goes in both directions. 45 00:06:04,170 --> 00:06:10,740 What the picture also shows is that there's a great deal of scatter. 46 00:06:10,740 --> 00:06:17,940 There are plenty of opportunities to get infrastructure wrong, even in relatively rich countries. 47 00:06:17,940 --> 00:06:24,600 This is the notorious Ciudad Real airport near Madrid. 48 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:27,990 A billion euros more or less of investment, 49 00:06:27,990 --> 00:06:43,140 and it went into bankruptcy a few years after being opened and infrastructure over investment has long been associated with indebtedness. 50 00:06:43,140 --> 00:06:54,810 There's growing concern about countries that benefited from from debt relief in the past, taking on unsustainable levels of debt again. 51 00:06:54,810 --> 00:07:04,720 Much of it associated with infrastructure investment. The terms of which are not entirely transparent. 52 00:07:04,720 --> 00:07:12,820 Now, you may be asking yourself by now why someone who works in the Environmental 53 00:07:12,820 --> 00:07:21,100 Change Institute is talking about the politics and economics of infrastructure. 54 00:07:21,100 --> 00:07:29,530 I've probably spent more time than I'm qualified to do labouring the point I just made, 55 00:07:29,530 --> 00:07:36,580 but I'm doing that because I think our determination and here I speak of mine and many of the 56 00:07:36,580 --> 00:07:45,580 colleagues I work with to address the urgency of the climate crisis needs to be in the context. 57 00:07:45,580 --> 00:07:54,760 The recognition that the most of the infrastructure development taking place around the world is is motivated by economic development. 58 00:07:54,760 --> 00:08:00,460 And there are some who would wish that reality away. 59 00:08:00,460 --> 00:08:08,470 Personally, I think we need to engage with the economics and the politics of infrastructure development 60 00:08:08,470 --> 00:08:17,380 to try to identify the points of leverage and shift those choices towards sustainability. 61 00:08:17,380 --> 00:08:23,140 At two point three trillion dollars a year, infrastructure investment at an all time high, 62 00:08:23,140 --> 00:08:31,210 and those choices, which are being made now, are locking in patterns of development for years to come. 63 00:08:31,210 --> 00:08:38,620 And yet, despite that level of infrastructure investment, we don't see the quantity, quality, 64 00:08:38,620 --> 00:08:50,860 affordability of infrastructure services that are needed for sustainable development and the many reasons for that. 65 00:08:50,860 --> 00:09:01,990 We governance political attraction to vanity projects and extracting rent, inadequate maintenance of assets. 66 00:09:01,990 --> 00:09:10,450 Insufficient availability of capital. At the same time as unsustainable levels of debt. 67 00:09:10,450 --> 00:09:16,120 Repeated damage to infrastructure by natural hazards and simply poor people 68 00:09:16,120 --> 00:09:23,920 being too poor to be able to afford the infrastructure services that they need. 69 00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:33,190 And all of those one might think fairly old chestnuts in the at least in the development economics literature. 70 00:09:33,190 --> 00:09:41,890 But I think there are some new ideas and opportunities which are shaking up that debate. 71 00:09:41,890 --> 00:09:52,660 One is the the recognition of the need for systems approaches to deal with the interdependencies between different infrastructure sectors. 72 00:09:52,660 --> 00:09:58,870 The fact that infrastructure is increasingly interdependent, interconnected and converging, 73 00:09:58,870 --> 00:10:07,030 in particular because of the role of digitisation and electrification within most infrastructure sectors. 74 00:10:07,030 --> 00:10:13,630 There's a renewed emphasis on upstream infrastructure planning. 75 00:10:13,630 --> 00:10:21,340 This went quite out of fashion because planning was regarded as being the largest, 76 00:10:21,340 --> 00:10:26,860 almost Stalinist, but actually the way in which infrastructure planning. 77 00:10:26,860 --> 00:10:34,210 And I think in particular about the role of the National Infrastructure Commission in this country is being thought of is much more now 78 00:10:34,210 --> 00:10:45,830 a process of exploring scenarios and developing adaptive strategies for investments and policy interventions in infrastructure systems. 79 00:10:45,830 --> 00:10:58,610 There is a growing recognition of the ways in which climate change is undermining the benefits of infrastructure investments, 80 00:10:58,610 --> 00:11:06,470 undermining sustainability, as well as vice versa, that infrastructure itself is is contributing to climate change. 81 00:11:06,470 --> 00:11:15,410 And there's a revolution going on with respect to infrastructure data so that we're much more able to pinpoint what's going on, 82 00:11:15,410 --> 00:11:19,700 what services are being delivered anywhere on the planet. 83 00:11:19,700 --> 00:11:23,300 These shots here come from work by Steve Rees here in Oxford, 84 00:11:23,300 --> 00:11:34,160 who's using Earth observation to look at the damage to infrastructure assets during earthquakes and use that to inform disaster risk reduction. 85 00:11:34,160 --> 00:11:40,760 And that seems to be a growing appetite amongst our partners in the World Bank, 86 00:11:40,760 --> 00:11:53,590 the UN and the Global Commission on Adaptation to recognise the imperative of sustainable infrastructure. 87 00:11:53,590 --> 00:12:02,230 The SD GS provide a much more comprehensive framework for thinking about the role of 88 00:12:02,230 --> 00:12:13,180 infrastructure in sustainable development than the Millennium Development Goals did a last year. 89 00:12:13,180 --> 00:12:21,250 Some colleagues here in Oxford and then a number of partners within development agencies and development banks. 90 00:12:21,250 --> 00:12:30,220 We published this analysis of the role of infrastructure in helping to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. 91 00:12:30,220 --> 00:12:38,110 And the headline there was that one hundred and twenty one of the hundred and sixty nine targets which go to 92 00:12:38,110 --> 00:12:47,050 make up the SDGs are either directly or indirectly influenced by the provision of infrastructure services. 93 00:12:47,050 --> 00:12:53,440 Some of those are quite obvious. SDG six and water that's the blue one. 94 00:12:53,440 --> 00:13:07,600 There is entirely dependent on infrastructure services SPG seven and energy SDG nine, which is industry, innovation and infrastructure. 95 00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:14,710 So no surprises there. But then right across the piece, we see the role that infrastructure has, for example, 96 00:13:14,710 --> 00:13:24,170 in providing information, enabling people to access services and participate in government. 97 00:13:24,170 --> 00:13:34,490 And yet, on the other hand, we recognise that, as I said at the start, infrastructure is part of the problem, as well as being part of the solution, 98 00:13:34,490 --> 00:13:46,800 inappropriate infrastructure development and appropriate land fragment habitats excludes the poorest and locks in carbon emissions. 99 00:13:46,800 --> 00:13:54,360 What we identified in the the analysis with respect to the SDGs is that not only does is the 100 00:13:54,360 --> 00:14:05,940 right type of infrastructure enable one to two to always necessary in order to deliver the SDGs. 101 00:14:05,940 --> 00:14:14,520 But the targets within the SDGs provide a series of guidelines and rules by 102 00:14:14,520 --> 00:14:20,770 which one can ensure that the infrastructure that is provided is sustainable. 103 00:14:20,770 --> 00:14:26,550 So the SDGs help to safeguard against the harmful impacts of infrastructure 104 00:14:26,550 --> 00:14:34,010 provision and ensure that the benefits of infrastructure are distributed equitably. 105 00:14:34,010 --> 00:14:44,840 What this analysis really demonstrates is how multifaceted many rolls of infrastructure actually are. 106 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:54,950 And so when we engage with decision makers around these problems, we find them asking these types of questions What do we prioritise? 107 00:14:54,950 --> 00:15:00,440 How do we provide services for everyone? Where do we start? 108 00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:06,050 How can we harness innovation and make appropriate use of the market? 109 00:15:06,050 --> 00:15:13,790 And the the way in which we've approached answering those questions within my group has been 110 00:15:13,790 --> 00:15:20,630 through development of systems approaches and that started with a large APEC programme, 111 00:15:20,630 --> 00:15:28,640 which this book came out of, which led to the development of the new modern national infrastructure systems model, 112 00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:37,790 which Julian referred to as an introduction. This was used by the National Infrastructure Commission for the National Infrastructure Assessment, 113 00:15:37,790 --> 00:15:45,290 and very recently we've used it for analysis of infrastructure provision in the in the Oxford, 114 00:15:45,290 --> 00:15:52,100 Cambridge arc, the way in which we structure the problem. 115 00:15:52,100 --> 00:15:58,190 Using these more than these next few slides will come from collaboration with the UN Office for Project 116 00:15:58,190 --> 00:16:08,720 Services begins by looking at what's the current state of infrastructure and the services that it's providing. 117 00:16:08,720 --> 00:16:16,820 What how does that then project into the future given the changing nature of demand for infrastructure services, 118 00:16:16,820 --> 00:16:22,100 changing population and economic structure climate? 119 00:16:22,100 --> 00:16:32,090 And then given that baseline projection, how does that compare with the level of performance which we might aspire to based on the SDGs? 120 00:16:32,090 --> 00:16:37,490 And usually there's some gap there. So the question then is, well, 121 00:16:37,490 --> 00:16:45,560 what combination of interventions both investments and policies can one implement in a staged 122 00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:54,230 way in order to build a sustainable infrastructure strategy which takes you towards your goal? 123 00:16:54,230 --> 00:17:04,340 And a series of tools have been developed within this model in order to help to inform that type of analysis. 124 00:17:04,340 --> 00:17:14,480 The latest version of that was done in St Lucia, and colleagues were out there just last month, 125 00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:23,510 where a national infrastructure planning and programme unit was established within the Finance Ministry. 126 00:17:23,510 --> 00:17:29,060 And in many senses, small island states are a good place to do this kind of thing. 127 00:17:29,060 --> 00:17:37,400 Because governance is quite concentrated, hierarchies are quite flat in many other parts of the world. 128 00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:42,050 The biggest obstacle one comes up against is who actually owns this problem? 129 00:17:42,050 --> 00:17:47,940 Because one has very siloed sets of ministries which seldom talk to each other. 130 00:17:47,940 --> 00:17:54,980 So there's a real struggle to develop that type of system, the systems approach, which we're promoting. 131 00:17:54,980 --> 00:18:02,000 But within St Lucia, and we managed to work very quickly to develop a set of geospatial data sets, 132 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:12,380 implement a version of the systems modelling and then move to use that to to develop pathways towards sustainable infrastructure. 133 00:18:12,380 --> 00:18:20,930 And that came in two parts. One was this question around what's the national vision for infrastructure service provision in the future, 134 00:18:20,930 --> 00:18:26,240 how it needs going to evolve and what are the options for us to address those needs? 135 00:18:26,240 --> 00:18:39,320 And then the flipside is the resilience and adaptation question So how vulnerable might those assets be to climatic extremes? 136 00:18:39,320 --> 00:18:47,300 And there are many of those sea level rise storm surges, flash flooding, landslides within St Lucia. 137 00:18:47,300 --> 00:18:55,370 So then how can those investments be made more resilient to those growing threats in future? 138 00:18:55,370 --> 00:19:01,880 And the type of framework which we use for doing that is to begin by looking, as I say, 139 00:19:01,880 --> 00:19:07,340 at this baseline, this is the baseline projection with respect to the electricity sector in St Lucia. 140 00:19:07,340 --> 00:19:14,250 So currently, more or less completely dependent on diesel generation upward demand, 141 00:19:14,250 --> 00:19:20,990 so the capacity margin, the security of supply potentially going down in future. 142 00:19:20,990 --> 00:19:33,530 And then we begin to look at, well, what's a realistic stage sequence of investments which enabled to improve security of supply and. 143 00:19:33,530 --> 00:19:43,100 A transition towards renewables, which the island is is committing to in its commitments with respect to Paris. 144 00:19:43,100 --> 00:19:52,280 And you can see that in this timeline, we gradually take off SDG targets as we progress through time. 145 00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:56,990 And you can see how the national strategy that was developed compares with 146 00:19:56,990 --> 00:20:04,790 respect to the baseline and inaction in the 2030s and 2050 is similar exercises. 147 00:20:04,790 --> 00:20:12,380 We're done with respect to solid waste, looking at the the SDGs goals with respect to the circular economy, 148 00:20:12,380 --> 00:20:18,470 the transition from landfill sites which we're rapidly getting filled up. 149 00:20:18,470 --> 00:20:26,990 That's the the red dotted line, which is is plummeting downwards to a whole series of more sustainable, 150 00:20:26,990 --> 00:20:33,620 solid waste management systems, which is a real problem on small islands in waste water. 151 00:20:33,620 --> 00:20:35,450 A similarly staged strategy. 152 00:20:35,450 --> 00:20:46,010 Sorry, this is water supply strategy to improve security of supply with respect to water provision and with wastewater again, 153 00:20:46,010 --> 00:21:00,200 a concerted effort in order to address the untreated discharge of sewage in a move to to to more comprehensive wastewater treatment in the future. 154 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:06,950 And then within that, we were able to look at the interdependencies and some of the major drivers, 155 00:21:06,950 --> 00:21:19,720 which come in particular from the growing tourist industry and the demand that that is producing on infrastructure services across the island. 156 00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:28,960 And together, those that strategic approach enables us to demonstrate how St Lucia can, 157 00:21:28,960 --> 00:21:37,630 if it moves in a staged way, achieve its commitments with respect to the Paris Agreement. 158 00:21:37,630 --> 00:21:51,670 That's all fine, unless there are climatic extremes, which might destroy or disrupt some of those sustainable investments. 159 00:21:51,670 --> 00:22:02,110 So then we come to the flip side of the sustainable infrastructure provision question, which is how do we make systems more resilient? 160 00:22:02,110 --> 00:22:09,430 And the way in which we address that is by identifying what is the climate risk at the moment? 161 00:22:09,430 --> 00:22:14,800 Where is it located? How is that changing? How much it might increase in the future? 162 00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:20,130 And then what are the cost effective adaptation options? 163 00:22:20,130 --> 00:22:28,450 There's a revolution underway in terms of the data sets, which we can access in order to address these problems. 164 00:22:28,450 --> 00:22:34,890 The snapshot on the left comes from a paper we published in Nature Communications last year, 165 00:22:34,890 --> 00:22:41,640 which was the first global assessment of transport infrastructure vulnerability to natural hazards. 166 00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:48,300 So you can analyse here. We analyse 60 million kilometres of road and rail data around the world, 167 00:22:48,300 --> 00:22:54,420 use global flood hazard data in order to identify where the greatest vulnerabilities are. 168 00:22:54,420 --> 00:23:05,250 And then the panel on the right is a combination of real and synthesised data of all of the global electricity supply and transmission infrastructure. 169 00:23:05,250 --> 00:23:13,630 So there's incredible capability now for us to analyse risk to infrastructure at a large scale. 170 00:23:13,630 --> 00:23:26,680 The assessment framework, which then leads into and combines mapping of where the hazards are located, where the infrastructure networks, 171 00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:39,610 if those networks are disrupted, how might flows of traffic of energy of water be rerouted through the network? 172 00:23:39,610 --> 00:23:47,950 And then what are the economic consequences of that disruption? Because understanding the economic consequences in the in the baseline case in the 173 00:23:47,950 --> 00:23:53,950 do nothing case is essential to then enable us to calculate if we do something, 174 00:23:53,950 --> 00:23:58,060 if we strengthen the network, if we make it more resilient in some senses, 175 00:23:58,060 --> 00:24:06,640 what's the benefit, which is the difference between the risk in the do nothing and the residual risk if we do something and so we 176 00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:15,280 can then rationally begin to weigh up costs and benefits of adaptation in order to prioritise interventions. 177 00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:19,390 We've done a series of studies at a national scale on this. 178 00:24:19,390 --> 00:24:26,950 The first was in in Tanzania and friend who's who's here did all of this work? 179 00:24:26,950 --> 00:24:38,500 First of all, looking at the hazards of the the risk of flooding, then looking at how that flooding might change going into the future. 180 00:24:38,500 --> 00:24:42,040 The next thing is then looking at the vulnerability of the transport networks. 181 00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:48,340 So how much is flowing through the network where the most important points in the network? 182 00:24:48,340 --> 00:24:54,280 And how is that projected to change going into the 2030s here? 183 00:24:54,280 --> 00:25:03,100 Given projections with respect to the economy and population and then now we switch to two other countries, 184 00:25:03,100 --> 00:25:14,090 we've worked in Vietnam and Argentina, where there we were able to calculate the economic consequences. 185 00:25:14,090 --> 00:25:17,380 So these are using all of these calculations, 186 00:25:17,380 --> 00:25:27,910 but millions of calculations of disruption rerouting the cost to businesses and the economy of those delays and rerouting in 187 00:25:27,910 --> 00:25:37,960 order to pinpoint where are the points in the transport network where you might get the greatest economic loss from disruption? 188 00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:43,030 And you can see on the scale that we're talking about losses of millions of dollars 189 00:25:43,030 --> 00:25:50,090 per day for disruption at the most critical points in the infrastructure network. 190 00:25:50,090 --> 00:25:54,080 The next question, then, is how might we respond to that? 191 00:25:54,080 --> 00:26:04,670 Some of that is is fairly conventional engineering, some of it is, is accessing the benefits of of nature based solutions with respect to, 192 00:26:04,670 --> 00:26:13,770 for example, slope stabilisation and dealing with with runoff and drainage issues. 193 00:26:13,770 --> 00:26:23,430 And that then becomes a question of weighing up the the those benefits of risk reduction, 194 00:26:23,430 --> 00:26:31,080 which is on the top part of the scale here with not only the cost of implementing those interventions, 195 00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:41,910 but also the ongoing maintenance cost and the occasional periodic maintenance costs associated with those interventions. 196 00:26:41,910 --> 00:26:51,660 And I mean, we have to be completely honest here that strengthening infrastructure networks in that way is not cheap. 197 00:26:51,660 --> 00:27:00,180 And so this is why we have to work very hard to make sure that the case around adaptation 198 00:27:00,180 --> 00:27:08,910 is very rigorously made and we can do that type of calculation to then again, 199 00:27:08,910 --> 00:27:17,850 pinpoint in the network where all of the most cost beneficial place is to intervene, as we have done in Vietnam in this picture. 200 00:27:17,850 --> 00:27:23,190 The panel on the right shows a benefit cost ratios. 201 00:27:23,190 --> 00:27:34,770 The Red Line is is one, so it's only the stuff above the line which is actually worth doing in in in simple economic terms. 202 00:27:34,770 --> 00:27:41,220 But we can see exactly which of those assets we should be prioritising if we have a 203 00:27:41,220 --> 00:27:50,240 limited budget in order to to strengthen and enhance the resilience of that network. 204 00:27:50,240 --> 00:28:01,010 There are a bunch of uncertainties in there, and so sensitivity analysis has been an important part of what we've done here. 205 00:28:01,010 --> 00:28:03,230 We're looking at two sensitivity. 206 00:28:03,230 --> 00:28:16,790 One is the change in the economy because that is what's driving the increasing usage of the network and the potential scale of economic disruption. 207 00:28:16,790 --> 00:28:23,450 But the the the x axis here is looking at the critical role of the duration 208 00:28:23,450 --> 00:28:28,940 of the delay in these calculations because how long the network is out for, 209 00:28:28,940 --> 00:28:33,050 how long those disruptions go on for is it is a really critical sensitivity 210 00:28:33,050 --> 00:28:38,750 in terms of how strong that economic case is for investment in the network. 211 00:28:38,750 --> 00:28:46,250 And it also demonstrates how important it is to to make sure that the delay is not long. 212 00:28:46,250 --> 00:28:52,100 That you have the facilities and arrangements in place in emergency recovery 213 00:28:52,100 --> 00:28:56,450 to enable you to get the system back up and running as quickly as possible, 214 00:28:56,450 --> 00:29:03,130 because that's crucial in terms of economic recovery. 215 00:29:03,130 --> 00:29:22,600 Now, I've spent quite a lot of time in the deep dives of this talk just now talking about things which are technical in quite narrow economic terms, 216 00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:29,680 I admit. What I've been talking about is a combination of data science, economics, 217 00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:37,870 engineering and what I've tried to demonstrate is that that those types of 218 00:29:37,870 --> 00:29:45,610 methodology are really now providing the potential to transform the way in which we, 219 00:29:45,610 --> 00:29:55,250 we think about infrastructure networks and go about prioritising it and making decisions around the world. 220 00:29:55,250 --> 00:30:06,040 Information on the technical, the economic, the data science is in part because that's the expertise of my group here in in Oxford. 221 00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:17,140 But from the outset, I've been emphasising how interdisciplinary the challenges of infrastructure actually are. 222 00:30:17,140 --> 00:30:27,460 Infrastructure is as much about people and politics as it is about engineering and technology and the environment. 223 00:30:27,460 --> 00:30:34,000 And in fact, across Oxford, we have have scholars working on all of those topics. 224 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:40,180 I mean, the purpose of this talk has really been to emphasise what a massive opportunity 225 00:30:40,180 --> 00:30:49,930 and often overlooked opportunity and also risk infrastructure decisions represent. 226 00:30:49,930 --> 00:31:00,070 And like it or not, infrastructure decision making is going to continue to be a rather centralised endeavour. 227 00:31:00,070 --> 00:31:11,020 There are plenty of opportunities to make it more inclusive and as the French conditional national do public is a 228 00:31:11,020 --> 00:31:21,070 great example of that of of getting people more involved in a more deliberative way in infrastructure decision making. 229 00:31:21,070 --> 00:31:28,720 But infrastructure is still concentrated in in a relatively small number of choices. 230 00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:33,670 But actually, if we flip that around that, that means that it's it's a particularly influential, 231 00:31:33,670 --> 00:31:44,270 if not unique, opportunity to gain leverage on the pathway towards sustainability. 232 00:31:44,270 --> 00:31:49,630 And it means that the the stakes with respect to infrastructure are really high. 233 00:31:49,630 --> 00:31:55,930 This is where things get locked in for decades to come. 234 00:31:55,930 --> 00:32:03,550 And I mean, one can dismiss infrastructure as being the preserve of corrupt elites, 235 00:32:03,550 --> 00:32:14,380 or you can can try and engage with it by whatever means we have at our disposal in order to inform and influence. 236 00:32:14,380 --> 00:32:25,240 And I think that's that's the opportunity that we have to ensure that infrastructure decisions are made more effectively. 237 00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:33,400 And I hope I provided some hints and methods, at least for how that can be done, 238 00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:47,590 which provides the potential for us to to navigate our road to infrastructure that takes us towards a sustainable development 239 00:32:47,590 --> 00:32:57,430 goals in a measurable and strategic way that preserves and restores the natural environment and ecosystem services. 240 00:32:57,430 --> 00:33:08,710 I haven't spent long talking about that, and perhaps we can pick that up in the discussion around how we can develop green infrastructure networks, 241 00:33:08,710 --> 00:33:18,430 which are long sided and embedded within great infrastructure and urban development. 242 00:33:18,430 --> 00:33:26,860 The imperative is that infrastructure is at the centre of the move to net zero that starts with the energy system. 243 00:33:26,860 --> 00:33:37,060 It goes onto heating and transport. And there are challenges along the way with respect to shipping and aviation and 244 00:33:37,060 --> 00:33:41,950 with respect to the materials that infrastructure uses cement and concrete, 245 00:33:41,950 --> 00:33:54,430 solid cement and steel. And in order to deal with that, we will have to create a new infrastructure for greenhouse gas removal, negative emissions. 246 00:33:54,430 --> 00:34:01,480 And finally, in all of this, we need to recognise that the future is highly uncertain. 247 00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:09,010 So we need an adaptable and resilient approach within our infrastructure systems. 248 00:34:09,010 --> 00:34:14,620 And I think that is a road worth trying to travel down. 249 00:34:14,620 --> 00:34:24,700 Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Jim. 250 00:34:24,700 --> 00:34:35,180 OK, so we have some microphones, you have to wait for the microphones, just so word of warning that this is being filmed and live webcast. 251 00:34:35,180 --> 00:34:41,290 So if you don't want to be filmed, you have to save your question to end and come up and talk to him privately. 252 00:34:41,290 --> 00:34:52,690 So there was one of the back. Hi. 253 00:34:52,690 --> 00:34:55,990 Roosevelt's initiative, which is, of course, 254 00:34:55,990 --> 00:35:07,540 the most by far the largest infrastructure investment programme that humanity has ever ever embarked upon. 255 00:35:07,540 --> 00:35:15,110 The question is that in assessing. Any sort of any surprises, sustainability concerns? 256 00:35:15,110 --> 00:35:16,870 How are they going to be addressed? 257 00:35:16,870 --> 00:35:30,270 Apart from the road and rail infrastructure port infrastructure, it's accompanied by major investment by Chinese lending institutions to. 258 00:35:30,270 --> 00:35:44,200 For fossil fuel infrastructure. So what what approaches does the community have that can? 259 00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:57,060 Alleviate the worries that many people feel that what is being put in place is breaking in a considerable portion of climate risk for the future. 260 00:35:57,060 --> 00:35:58,980 Yeah, that's a very good question. 261 00:35:58,980 --> 00:36:13,650 The Belt and Road Initiative, the VRA is the the the largest piece of strategic infrastructure development that's going on one. 262 00:36:13,650 --> 00:36:24,240 Factoid that struck me is that the bra investments in Pakistan alone apparently will be total 263 00:36:24,240 --> 00:36:29,740 more than the total value of all infrastructure investment in Pakistan since independence. 264 00:36:29,740 --> 00:36:41,520 So this is investment on on a huge scale and you're you're right in pointing out issues both around the transparency 265 00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:51,120 of those investments and what they they mean in terms of the countries who are entering into contracts. 266 00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:58,140 And indeed, in relation to coal fired power plants in particular, is is a very big issue. 267 00:36:58,140 --> 00:37:03,520 So to be honest, I think there's there's there's quite a lot to worry about. 268 00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:15,450 On the flip side, if one looks at China at the moment and the level of recognition of the threats 269 00:37:15,450 --> 00:37:21,660 of climate change and the amount of innovation that is taking on in China. 270 00:37:21,660 --> 00:37:27,720 China needs to be part of the solution as well as part of the problem. 271 00:37:27,720 --> 00:37:40,190 The extent to which that is being propagated through the BRI for the time being, I think remains to be seen. 272 00:37:40,190 --> 00:37:47,450 Yes. I've always been puzzled by the definition of infrastructure. 273 00:37:47,450 --> 00:38:03,380 Why? I mean, would it would not cover hospitals, pre-school facilities if it's, you know, an actual building? 274 00:38:03,380 --> 00:38:09,020 Or prisons, homeless centres and so on. 275 00:38:09,020 --> 00:38:19,630 Is it because those things it's hard to measure an immediate impact on growth or. 276 00:38:19,630 --> 00:38:21,790 Economic activity in some way. 277 00:38:21,790 --> 00:38:34,360 No, the definitional question is a very good one and and it's a tricky one, and usually the categories that are sort of what I've been talking about, 278 00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:41,020 which is network economic infrastructures, energy, transportation, communications, water and waste. 279 00:38:41,020 --> 00:38:51,130 And then, as you've suggested, this is a larger category of so-called social infrastructure, schools, hospitals, prisons, police stations. 280 00:38:51,130 --> 00:39:00,670 Some people put banking into that setting as well as you have seen, the work, 281 00:39:00,670 --> 00:39:11,020 which I do is is is more narrowly defined and there are some particular characteristics to the networked economic infrastructure, 282 00:39:11,020 --> 00:39:15,790 which is different to schools and hospitals in that. 283 00:39:15,790 --> 00:39:20,260 Well, everything operates as a system. We have a health care system, an education system, 284 00:39:20,260 --> 00:39:31,750 but networked infrastructure is does much more explicitly operate as a system rather than as a series of individual regional entities. 285 00:39:31,750 --> 00:39:37,810 And that brings economies of scale increasing returns. 286 00:39:37,810 --> 00:39:47,710 As the network gets bigger, it brings the potential for systemic risks of network disruption. 287 00:39:47,710 --> 00:40:03,070 And it it it implies that we need to deal with those networks in a particular way, which is why we've settled on on that category. 288 00:40:03,070 --> 00:40:20,550 But you're right that the social infrastructure, of course, is something which we all are concerned about as well. 289 00:40:20,550 --> 00:40:29,220 Can you pass down? I thank you very much, Simon Kite's. 290 00:40:29,220 --> 00:40:35,430 I'd like to ask what the UK should be doing on on two particular fronts with regard to infrastructure. 291 00:40:35,430 --> 00:40:44,310 You had a graphic on there, which was for another country with a nice curve of because and, you know, just a small section of them going above one. 292 00:40:44,310 --> 00:40:54,400 But obviously in this country, a lot of the decisions by government departments look for benefit to cost ratio of two and a half or even four. 293 00:40:54,400 --> 00:41:01,840 Even though some of the major projects are going ahead in this country have rather poor benefit to cost ratio, 294 00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:07,120 is that what we should be doing constant continuing to concentrate on getting a PCR for, 295 00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:14,860 for example, or should we be starting with a target for net zero and looking at natural capital and ecosystem services? 296 00:41:14,860 --> 00:41:17,140 That's one part of it. And the other is about the balance. 297 00:41:17,140 --> 00:41:25,240 You mentioned the kind of concentration and diffusion of decision making and the difference between, 298 00:41:25,240 --> 00:41:32,080 for example, St Lucia and what France has been trying to do on a more inclusive decision making fronts. 299 00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:40,610 How should Britain go about getting that right as well? Yeah, thank you for that. 300 00:41:40,610 --> 00:41:52,910 I emphasised that the narrow framing in terms of benefit cost ratios is is very much a tool. 301 00:41:52,910 --> 00:42:08,120 It's a starting point. It provides a means of prioritisation when you've got a lot of things which look rather similar in a very big system. 302 00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:15,500 If you're you're, you're absolutely right that there are many different dimensions to this in terms of different values. 303 00:42:15,500 --> 00:42:23,420 And if we think, for example, about nature based solutions, one of the attractions of them is that they bring multiple co-benefits, 304 00:42:23,420 --> 00:42:31,460 as well as helping us to manage climate risks, and that goes to benefit recreation, landscape and so on. 305 00:42:31,460 --> 00:42:41,840 So I think what one needs to be very cautious about how you use the tools of benefit 306 00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:47,320 cost ratio and be ready to bring in those multiple dimensions along the way. 307 00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:49,010 The next thing you were hinting at is, well, 308 00:42:49,010 --> 00:42:57,980 should actually we be doing something more goal based and then looking perhaps at the most cost effective way of achieving that goal? 309 00:42:57,980 --> 00:43:05,240 And in some instances where we have a very clear goal like net zero in the way this is what the 310 00:43:05,240 --> 00:43:10,040 Committee on Climate Change does is it recommends on what's the best way of hitting the target, 311 00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:19,280 which Parliament has set. So in that context, yes, but in many other contexts, and if we look at the SDGs as a whole, 312 00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:25,850 there's a very complex series of trade-offs and we don't have snappy goals. 313 00:43:25,850 --> 00:43:36,500 And so this is a business of navigating a series of trade-offs rather than just finding the least cost way of achieving a goal. 314 00:43:36,500 --> 00:43:45,410 And finally, your question was about the the governance of infrastructure. 315 00:43:45,410 --> 00:43:50,570 I mentioned that the National Infrastructure Commission in this country, 316 00:43:50,570 --> 00:44:04,730 which is a interesting development that is motivated by one well-known governance issue associated with infrastructure, 317 00:44:04,730 --> 00:44:11,360 that it becomes a bit of a political football and decisions get kicked back and forth between different 318 00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:18,200 administrations when we're talking about systems which take very many years to come into existence. 319 00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:26,150 So that's the motivation for arm's length bodies like the inland and the Committee on Climate Change. 320 00:44:26,150 --> 00:44:40,880 The problem with that is the Democratic deficit that these types of bodies are seen as being unaccountable. 321 00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:44,930 Now there is in both climate policy and infrastructure policy. 322 00:44:44,930 --> 00:44:50,330 In the end, the buck stops with ministers or in that sense, it's part of the democratic process. 323 00:44:50,330 --> 00:45:04,970 But I think what the French example I referred to is interesting in recognising that in order to engage effectively in these types of choices, 324 00:45:04,970 --> 00:45:08,990 you need quite deep and prolonged deliberation. In a sense, 325 00:45:08,990 --> 00:45:17,470 this is is what the goal of the citizens assembly around climate change is about at the moment is to to 326 00:45:17,470 --> 00:45:25,370 get a cross-section of people thinking about something quite deeply interrogating data and expertise, 327 00:45:25,370 --> 00:45:31,610 getting feedback and conversing around it in order to navigate those trade-offs that I've talked 328 00:45:31,610 --> 00:45:41,260 about and that it feels to me as though that that's the the way in which we should be going. 329 00:45:41,260 --> 00:45:55,820 Are there any other questions? This one here in the front camera. 330 00:45:55,820 --> 00:45:56,660 Thank you, I'm sorry, 331 00:45:56,660 --> 00:46:05,750 I was just wondering if you could give us a brief insight into the green infrastructure which you alluded to at the end of your talk. 332 00:46:05,750 --> 00:46:11,030 Some of the things that we might be seeing. Yeah. 333 00:46:11,030 --> 00:46:23,840 So the sorts of things we're talking about here are ways in which green infrastructure can either substitute for or compliment grey infrastructure, 334 00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:29,480 the sorts of things we're talking about with respect to flooding and drainage. 335 00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:40,730 So and sustainable urban drainage, as is the term that's often used where rather than putting water into pipes, 336 00:46:40,730 --> 00:46:47,720 we put it into soils or wetlands or ponds and enable it to to infiltrate naturally. 337 00:46:47,720 --> 00:46:54,110 And that also has benefits with respect to water quality and natural purification of water. 338 00:46:54,110 --> 00:47:05,510 Or we might be talking about large-scale scale natural flood management at a catchment scale, which can help to retain water up in catchments. 339 00:47:05,510 --> 00:47:15,920 We might be thinking about also about urban cooling and vegetation on a large scale in catchments, which also helps to deal with water quality issues. 340 00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:25,010 So addressing diffuse pollution rather than than having to clean up that water in water treatment works. 341 00:47:25,010 --> 00:47:31,400 The the the idea of a of nature networks, 342 00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:41,360 which I touched on at the end and this is part of government policy now is the development of nature networks. 343 00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:53,150 It's quite embryonic. But I think that the direction of travel with that should be that we map out the the 344 00:47:53,150 --> 00:48:02,150 networks and spaces for nature at a national scale in the same way as we map out of physical 345 00:48:02,150 --> 00:48:10,550 infrastructure and try and prioritise that and prioritise the restoration and completion 346 00:48:10,550 --> 00:48:18,110 of those networks as part of building development and infrastructure development. 347 00:48:18,110 --> 00:48:33,010 And it may be that we can embed those nature networks within urban development, as well as conserving and restoring spaces in the in in rural areas. 348 00:48:33,010 --> 00:48:35,120 So that's really what I'm guessing it is. 349 00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:43,280 This kind of move towards co-development of of green networks and green networks, some of which will be in rural areas. 350 00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:49,640 And some of that green will go right through our urban areas will be alongside. 351 00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:56,300 And part of our great infrastructure. 352 00:48:56,300 --> 00:49:04,430 David Henry, you talked a lot about data, and you're obviously using a lot of satellite data, but our partner, Climate Central, 353 00:49:04,430 --> 00:49:13,480 has recently shown that satellite measurements of the height of coastlines at sea age is wrong by about four to five metres around a lot to the world. 354 00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:18,740 It's wrong in the wrong direction because the satellites have been bouncing off the tops of trees, 355 00:49:18,740 --> 00:49:25,910 the tops of houses and other things, not of the actual level of the coast where it hits the sea. 356 00:49:25,910 --> 00:49:30,710 Now I do wonder to the extent to which when you design the infrastructure, 357 00:49:30,710 --> 00:49:38,120 you can do much more research on the data and not just take measurements as if they were in fact correct. 358 00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:46,160 That Climate Central spent three years developing new measures using LiDAR to actually see what is the height at the coast. 359 00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:52,760 And it turns out about 500 million more people are going to be subject to flooding on the basis of the 360 00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:58,910 estimates that they've come up with from what is actually the height where the ocean hits the land. 361 00:49:58,910 --> 00:50:04,040 Never mind the fact that it's rising, that cities are thinking that the coastline is being eroded, 362 00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:13,010 and it's quite worrying that infrastructure development around coastlines and a lot of your coastline in Thailand is some of it's quite low, 363 00:50:13,010 --> 00:50:21,080 some of it's quite high. But one does worry a lot that the accuracy is much more important than I think being ascribed at the moment. 364 00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:33,560 Mm-Hmm. Yeah, we're we're very much people who do as best we can, and we're always on the lookout for new and better data sets, 365 00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:43,550 including with respect to digital elevation, which, as you say, is is so crucial for flood modelling, including on the coast. 366 00:50:43,550 --> 00:50:56,000 And you're you're absolutely right. Also around coastal infrastructure, some of the trickiest questions with respect to adaptation exist on the coast. 367 00:50:56,000 --> 00:51:07,550 So how do we decide and where do we decide where to let the natural submergence and retreats of the coastline proceed? 368 00:51:07,550 --> 00:51:15,920 Because that is what coasts do when the sea level rises and the inherently resilient in that sense? 369 00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:19,730 Or where, on the other hand, 370 00:51:19,730 --> 00:51:33,790 is it going to be necessary to to invest in it will be necessary in the future to invest a lot more in order to to to protect coastal infrastructure. 371 00:51:33,790 --> 00:51:41,300 Hi. Howell, again, concerning I just to. 372 00:51:41,300 --> 00:51:49,650 We have a substantial investment, just shy, just some somewhere around 100 billion. 373 00:51:49,650 --> 00:51:53,010 Pounds over a large extended period of time. 374 00:51:53,010 --> 00:52:07,750 What are your views on the the role of this kind of mega scale of investment considering all all the all the varied kinds of. 375 00:52:07,750 --> 00:52:11,840 Impacts it will have, for example, on. 376 00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:20,390 On the woodlands and the different spaces that are important for biodiversity along the route, do you think it's worth the effort? 377 00:52:20,390 --> 00:52:34,220 Is it rational for these, for these times? Yeah, in one of the things I said in passing is that in the face of uncertainty, 378 00:52:34,220 --> 00:52:41,180 one in principle is better off doing things which are incremental and scalable. 379 00:52:41,180 --> 00:52:46,400 And on the other hand, something like HS2 is a massive band, isn't it? 380 00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:51,080 It's about as lumpy as a they get. 381 00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:58,400 So that was it was. HS2 was always going to be an extraordinarily difficult decision, 382 00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:09,380 in part because this bet is based on what I mentioned at the start around economic geography. 383 00:53:09,380 --> 00:53:20,630 And so how will a piece of infrastructure like that change the spatial structure of our economy? 384 00:53:20,630 --> 00:53:26,780 And those are the things which are most difficult to predict because they depend on on lots of other 385 00:53:26,780 --> 00:53:34,280 things which will go on in the meantime and then do it get the questions around the trade offs, 386 00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:38,180 the impact on the extraordinarily precious pieces in the natural environment, 387 00:53:38,180 --> 00:53:49,340 whether the money could be used better for other purposes, but when and certainly when I asked my daughter about this, she just said to me, 388 00:53:49,340 --> 00:54:02,920 well, well, that if and if we're going to be flying less and driving less in the future, then we've got to do this thing and we. 389 00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:11,230 OK. It seems to be a good note to end on and before we just close finally and thank you again. 390 00:54:11,230 --> 00:54:17,170 I would just like to urge you to check out the other talks in our series. 391 00:54:17,170 --> 00:54:21,000 It's every Thursday at five o'clock in this room. 392 00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:28,330 It's the series is on shaping the future, and it covers a huge range of issues, from infrastructure right through to health. 393 00:54:28,330 --> 00:54:32,920 And next week we have Professor Malcolm McCulloch, 394 00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:39,940 who runs a programme at the Martin School on integrating renewable energy, and he is talking about powering the future. 395 00:54:39,940 --> 00:54:45,220 Switching on to renewables. But now just like to close with one final. 396 00:54:45,220 --> 00:55:01,041 Thank you for a really stimulating hour. Thank you very much, Jim.