Critical Infrastructure Resilience and Social Transformation through Real-time Monitoring and Risk Informed Decision Making for climate adaptation

Poor planning and insufficient maintenance of existing structures and systems in developing countries like Nepal and Bangladesh have left them inadequate, unreliable, and vulnerable. Natural hazards have further exacerbated the impacts on these fragile, complex, and interconnected systems, which are expected to rise with the looming threat of increasing climate-induced uncertainties. Infrastructure resilience is, hence, indispensable for the sustainable development of any society. Therefore, a robust monitoring and decision support system is crucial in strengthening infrastructure resilience, which will inadvertently help in societal adaptation and resilience to hazards and threats. This paper discusses the effectiveness of digital technologies in reducing the risk of climate-induced hazards, taking the case of a climate change innovation – CRISTA developed by the Asian Institute of Technology and showcasing how the pilot solution was successful in addressing one of the pressing gaps in critical infrastructure risk management in Nepal. The CRISTA application collects real-time community information while delivering risk information and alerts. A human-AI hybrid network served as an interface between the data collected from real-time monitoring and the CRISTA dashboard. The vulnerability assessment for input in CRISTA was carried out using the IPCC AR5 risk assessment framework. This study also proves how digital technology applications can be beneficial for near-real-time monitoring, risk assessment, and decision-making in risk management of critical infrastructure systems by the use and integration of a crowdsourcing mobile application and associated geospatial dashboard.