2026-11-25 –, MacCallum Room
Climate change is altering the way organisations plan, deliver, and govern infrastructure. Increasing exposure to climate-related risks, such as bushfires, floods, and storms, places growing pressure on critical infrastructure that underpins the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. When hazards strike, their impact extends beyond individual infrastructure assets and organisations. They can disrupt the performance, reliability, and safety of entire infrastructure systems while challenging the organisations’ ability to maintain essential services. Yet, research often examines how individual organisations respond to climate-related hazards, with limited attention to how they collaborate across borders to strengthen the resilience of interconnected infrastructure systems. This study investigates how interorganisational coordination can support the governance of shared and interdependent risks in infrastructure systems, with a focus on bushfires. We examine governance frameworks, stakeholder relationships, and coordination mechanisms throughout which infrastructure organisations collectively manage climate-related risks. Susceptible–infected diffusion network models simulate how disruptions propagate through networks of interdependent risks, infrastructure assets and organisations. We contribute to infrastructure resilience, systemic risk, and interorganisational networks literature by evaluating how coordination arrangements across infrastructure organisations can strengthen their collective capacity to anticipate and manage cascading climate risks.
John Sebastián Salazar Flórez is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Project Management at the University of Sydney. He holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Sydney, a master's degree in Civil Engineering from Universidad de los Andes, and a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His research examines how interorganisational networks, governance arrangements, and institutional conditions shape the delivery and outcomes of infrastructure projects.