The Institution of Civil Engineers' recent State of the Nation report on infrastructure highlighted the need to change our thinking to cope resilience in face of changing climate and more extreme weather. Vice president and chair of the ICE State of the Nation panel Keith Clarke discussed the challenge with Antony Oliver.

"We are at the threshold of a different risk profile," explains Clarke, highlighting that the changing climate is redefining our previous view of what we can expect or afford from infrastructure preformance.

"We are at the threshold of a different risk profile. The old view of infrastucture 24/7 just isn't going to work"

"It is a huge challenge. We are going to have more extreme events and the old view of infrastucture 24/7 just isn't going to work," he said. "The way that we privatised infrastucture in the UK didn't deal with resilience and certainly didnt deal with the resilience of systems."

The last four years of Coalition government have seen progress made towards improving the UK’s infrastructure but more action is needed to create truly world class infrastructure, according to the Institution of Civil Engineers latest State of the Nation report on infrastructure, published in June.

Of the six sectors examined, only water and strategic transport were rated as “adequate for now”. The report down-graded the performance in local transport from that seen in 2010 to now class the sector as “at risk”.

And despite some improvement being seen in the flood management, energy and waste sectors, all were described by the report as “requires attention”.