Planning horizons of a critical infrastructure like an airport overlaps with the potential long-term impacts of climate change. Therefore, changes in temperature, rainfall and extreme event patterns as well as rising sea levels can threat the physical infrastructure as well as business and operation of an airport. As a response to this airports around the world are assessing their long-term physical infrastructure as well as regulatory and business risks to climate change and developing adaptation strategies.

In general, increasing climate resilience of an airport involves:

1. a)educating airport staffs and travellers about what to do during an extreme event and communicating effectively when something happens;
2. b)design infrastructure (terminal, runway, hangers etc) that takes into account the potential consequences of climate change;
3. c)Understanding interdependencies among different infrastructure systems that supports airport’s operation (e.g., stormwater system, water/waste water treatment, power supply etc) and putting business continuity measures and back-up plans in place to support airport operations during extreme events.
4. d)Adopting business models and funding mechanisms that incentivise long-term planning, preparedness and prevention.
5. e)Incorporate resilience measures that could create additional sustainability benefits to the airport.

This session will discuss some of these challenges and will shed some light on how airports in Australia, specifically Adelaide airportare tackling these issues.