breakout session presentations ‘infrastructure planning, dr geoff darch, atkins’

Adaptive Strategic Planning

Infrastructure Planning workshop

Dr Geoff Darch

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Decision making challenges

• Huge infrastructure legacy / deficit (depending on location)

• Expensive, lumpy, long-term investments

• Very long asset life / permanent assets

• Significant long-term uncertainties in supply and demand:

population; efficiency savings; changes in demand; regulation;

climate change

• Interdependencies

• UK examples:

– Water: resilience; strategic supply schemes; >£40bn AMP6

– Energy: changes to energy mix; £275bn pipeline

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Scenario planning

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Scenario planning

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Robust decision making

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Darch et al. (2011) for Adaptation Sub-Committee and

Thames Water

Real options

Extend to consider costs and benefits of decision choices across

pathway e.g. opportunity cost

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First date of

possible change

Second date of

possible change

Monitoring

An adaptive approach requires monitoring:

• Horizon scanning e.g. new risks

• Assess changes in large-scale drivers e.g. risks

• Refine understanding of infrastructure systems

• Identify critical sensitivities and thresholds

• Evaluate performance

SCADA and ‘big data’ can help inform appropriate analytics.

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Conclusions

For more effective decision making need

to plan:

• Long-term

• For robustness rather than optimality

• Collaboratively

• Monitoring

A variety of techniques are available!

What planning approaches are you

using?

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Thank you

geoff.darch@atkinsglobal.com

www.atkinsglobal.com

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