Assessing New Zealand's vulnerabilities

Key insights from our experience through lifelines projects and emergency events are shared here.

The National Vulnerability Assessment report provides a comprehensive overview of New Zealand’s critical lifelines infrastructure and its resilience (and conversely its vulnerability) to major hazards. Further information below.

Infrastructure services must be considered as systems

… of physical assets, controls and functions. One of many examples is domestic and international air travel where Airways New Zealand is a critical component to navigation in New Zealand’s airspace.

Many utility assets are highly vulnerable to natural hazards

… particularly those located where ground deformation could occur or in floodplains.

All utilities are now critically dependent on other utilities

Maintaining and restoring services to other utilities (and to their contractors and consultants) is therefore vital for broader community recovery.

There are also vulnerabilities within individual utility organisations

For example, outsourcing key functions can add to service continuity challenges especially in emergencies.

Aotearoa New Zealand's Critical Infrastructure

This National Vulnerability Assessment Report aims to provide government, industry, researchers, and communities with a better understanding of:

1. New Zealand’s critical national infrastructure.
2. The vulnerability of New Zealand’s infrastructure systems to hazards.
3. The infrastructure system settings that hinder or enable resilient infrastructure.
4. Customers’ and communities’ needs, vulnerabilities, and abilities to contribute to overall resilience.

The report provides a unique strategic perspective of all infrastructure services as they act in combination to support the wellbeing of New Zealanders. It is intended to stimulate awareness, particularly about interdependencies, and drive a change in approach to prioritising resilience investment in infrastructure, to best meet our community needs. The New Zealand Lifelines Council (NZLC) updates this report regularly to maintain this work as a current state of play of New Zealand’s infrastructure resilience.

First produced in 2017 and updated in 2020, this 2023 edition strengthens previous reports with:

- Expanded scope of ‘critical infrastructure’ sectors to include sections on Flood Protection, Solid Waste and Financial Payments.
- Development of the definition and criteria, and identification of Critical National Infrastructure.
- Increased focus on the needs of customers and communities and their ability to contribute to overall resilience improvements.
- Expanded content on climate change implications for national infrastructure and mitigation / adaptation pathways.

Part A: Summary

Section 1: Summary

For those with limited time – provides cross-reference into the main report for detail.
Summarises the report purpose and context.
Provides background to critical customers and communities, critical national infrastructure.
Summarises key sector vulnerabilities.
Outlines proposed next steps.

Part B: Main Report - Infrastructure Resilience in New Zealand

Section 2: Introduction

NZ Lifelines sector, report purpose, approach and content.

Section 3: Infrastructure Serving Communities

Critical customers, critical infrastructure and their dependencies and interdependencies, plus national infrastructure ‘hotspots’.

Section 4: National Resilience Drivers and Initiatives

Regulation and funding for lifelines infrastructure resilience and major lifeline utility resilience initiatives.

Section 5: Next Steps

Potential areas of further work are identified to close gaps identified during this update.

Part C: Infrastructure sectors and hazards assessment

Section 6: New Zealand’s Critical Infrastructure

An overview of New Zealand’s lifeline utility networks and critical infrastructure within those networks.
Information for each sector on:
- vulnerabilities to hazards.
- critical customers that are dependent on its services.
- regulation and funding relating to resilience.
- current/proposed resilience investment programmes.

Section 7: Vulnerability to Hazards

An overview of major hazards to New Zealand’s infrastructure, including earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, severe weather and climate change, pandemic, fire, and more.
For each of these hazards, the hazard context is summarised along with an assessment of impacts to lifelines infrastructure arising from that hazard.