ATSE welcomes the opportunity to respond to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport’s inquiry into the implications of severe weather events on the national regional, rural, and remote road network. ATSE makes the following recommendations to strengthen road network planning to mitigate these impacts:
Recommendation 1: Infrastructure planners need to ensure infrastructure decisions take a whole-of-systems approach in the planning phase.
Recommendation 2: The Australian Government must build data collection and sharing frameworks for infrastructure asset planning, design, construction, and maintenance to inform decision-makers.
Recommendation 3: Infrastructure planners need to enhance infrastructure assessment modelling by using probabilistic assessments to provide a more accurate and robust assessment of infrastructure asset performance.
Recommendation 4: The Australian Government must amend design and construction guidelines for road infrastructure that take into account up-to-date climate change metrics.
Recommendation 5: Infrastructure planners need to plan for the electrification of transport and ensure infrastructure assets like charging stations should be built to be resilient to external shocks caused by climate change.
Recommendation 6: The Australian Government must consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and utilise Traditional Knowledge in developing measures to achieve road resilience.