Risk Infrastructure & Resilience

Supporting Innovation in Risk, Infrastructure, and Maintenance for Greater Community Resilience

Victorian councils hold over $140 billion in infrastructure and assets. With much of this infrastructure in its twilight years, the maintenance backlog to renew aging infrastructure is being pressured by new and emerging needs. These include growing populations and changes in use and performance expectations. Failure to act potentially compromises quality of life, community health and safety, and is likely to incur significant costs to maintain baseline performance. Rapid innovation in maintenance practices is critical.

The public liability insurance that councils hold and maintain for community is an invisible safety net that underpins the Australian way of life. The MAV operates an insurance business that provides this public liability and public indemnity insurance for Victorian Councils. This provides a unique perspective into the risks facing the sector and the growing challenges of holding and servicing those risks.

Globally, our risk infrastructures – how we hold and manage risk to ensure continuity in assets and wellbeing - is under immense stress. It is increasingly critical that we understand and communicate the value of this, to reveal the importance of this invisible safety net in a way that helps people understand its value and want to support and invest in its security and stability.

In Australia, hyper-connected community-based resilience networks of community members, industry, advocacy groups and government are building momentum through grassroots action to support distributed, networked and collaborative solutions focused on disaster response and recovery, emergency management, and climate change adaptation.

Supporting these efforts is increasingly critical as social cohesion will be a determining factor in locally responsive readiness and resilience in the face of growing disasters, particularly when it comes to the needs of vulnerable community members.

The emerging portfolio of projects within the MAVlab Risk Infrastructure and Resilience program will focus on understanding, quantifying and communicating the risk infrastructures that underpin our ways of life.

This work aims to understand the challenges and opportunities for repair and investment in their resilience. It will seek to identify intervention points for maintenance innovation and adaptation, convening stakeholders and communities of practice, and advocating for change to support councils and communities through a significant period of transition.

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