The latest research, Weathering the storm: adapting Victoria’s infrastructure to climate change, was today launched at La Trobe’s Bundoora campus, where climate change adaptations and sustainability are key priorities.

Following the 2016 flooding of the Stathallan Creek that runs through the University, the University has made numerous improvements to the campus to generate multiple benefits, including reduced risk from severe weather events and upstream flooding.

As part of its 2029 Net Zero target, the University is also creating the largest urban solar farm in Victoria, with around 4,300 solar panels generating enough renewable energy to reduce total University emissions by 15 per cent. It has also installed rooftop solar panels, energy efficient LED lights, mechanical system efficiency upgrades and batteries to store solar energy at all its campuses.

In addition, the University has a strong focus on climate change teaching and research, including the introduction of the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab.

The Director of the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab, Professor Lauren Rickards, contributed to the Infrastructure Victoria report by providing a peer review of a key background technical report.

Professor Rickards said the final Infrastructure Victoria report identifies serious risks but also numerous, useful adaptation options.

“The overall report finds that, as with the rest of the nation, Victoria has a major adaptation deficit when it comes to infrastructure. Most of our road and electricity networks are not equipped for our new climate change conditions,” Professor Rickards said.

“Disruptions to them can rapidly propagate through our systems, impacting a huge number of activities and groups and worsening vulnerability to subsequent stresses. As the recent draft National Climate Risk Assessment and latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report also emphasise, improving our understanding of these risks and finding clever ways to reduce them is crucial.”

“The analysis Infrastructure Victoria has done for Weathering the Storm is a valuable contribution because it spotlights the issue, pushes us to ask how we are actually going to adapt, and pushes us further to consider how we are even going to answer that question”.

Professor Rickards said research such as that undertaken by Infrastructure Victoria and the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab is vital because climate change impacts and risks are a new challenge and require a lot of careful work and different perspectives to understand and manage well.

“While adaptation includes learning to live with more uncertainty, a lot of the uncertainties we currently face can be reduced with research, notably social science research to illuminate how and why physical conditions turn into negative impacts for different entities and groups – and what we can do to intervene,” she said.

“Extreme events have already become more frequent and severe, generating serious impacts, exposing us to high residual risk, and revealing an adaptation deficit. Each extreme weather event that catches us ill-prepared turns into an impactful disaster.

“The more we are forced to respond to the latest disaster, the less time, money and energy we have to proactively adapt to climate change. This dangerous spiral means that the best time to adapt is now. Wise research-informed adaptation reduces the consequences of extreme weather events and stops them becoming disastrous. It can also trigger major insights and help make things better than they were before.”