Energy and Infrastructure Resilience

This research area focuses on how energy and infrastructure systems can be planned, built, and rebuilt to remain reliable under natural and human-caused disruptions. Energy systems are closely connected to essential services such as water supply, healthcare, food systems, transport, communication, education, and economic activity. When energy infrastructure fails, the impacts can spread quickly across society, affecting livelihoods, development, and public safety.

A central focus is climate hazard resilience. Energy infrastructure is increasingly exposed to floods, droughts, heat extremes, storms, wildfires, and other climate-related hazards. These hazards can damage generation assets, disrupt electricity grids, reduce the performance of renewable energy technologies, and affect access to modern energy services. The research examines how climate risk and impact modelling can be integrated into energy planning, including geospatial electrification and clean cooking access models, and broader infrastructure planning tools.

The research also addresses energy planning in post-conflict and fragile settings. When conflicts occur, energy infrastructure is often severely damaged, yet energy is essential for meeting basic needs such as water provision, food systems, healthcare, emergency response, and shelter. As recovery progresses, energy demand grows to support schools, businesses, infrastructure repair, public services, and economic reconstruction. In the long term, large amounts of energy may be required to rebuild cities, industries, ecosystems, and social infrastructure.

In these settings, energy planning must go beyond restoring what was lost. It must consider how energy systems can support peace, development, resilience, and equity over time. Poorly planned recovery can reinforce unequal access, pollution, dependence on fragile infrastructure, or vulnerability to future climate and conflict risks. Well-planned recovery can instead help build more reliable, inclusive, and sustainable energy systems.

Main research objectives

• Understand how energy and infrastructure systems are affected by climate hazards, conflict, and other major disruptions.

• Integrate climate risk, vulnerability, and resilience analysis into energy planning models and infrastructure decision-making.

• Assess exposure and risk for electrification, clean cooking, and other energy access investments.

• Examine how energy needs evolve across emergency, recovery, reconstruction, and long-term development phases after conflict.

• Link energy planning in fragile and post-conflict settings to sustainable development goals and outcomes, including health, water, education, livelihoods, and economic recovery.

• Provide practical ways to quantify energy demand and infrastructure needs in complex, data-scarce, and rapidly changing settings.

• Enable planners to compare different recovery and resilience strategies and their implications for cost, access, emissions, reliability, and vulnerability.

Projects 

• Bridging Climate Action and Sustainable Development: Advanced Assessment Tools for Global Infrastructure Projects, a KTH and UNOPS Collaboration

• Impacts of flood exposure on emergency health services in Sweden

Recent publications and outputs

• UNOPS, From Rubble to Resource: Guidance for people-centred circular rubble management and reconstruction . 2026.
• Adshead, D., Thacker, S., Pant, R., Hall, J.W. & Fuso Nerini, F. Integrating climate resilience in energy access planning . SSRN (preprint). 2026.
• Wernersson, L., Adshead, D. & Fuso Nerini, F. Energy for Sustainable Post-Conflict Development . Research square (preprint). 2026.
• Adshead, D., Jonsson, M., Mezger, N., Destouni, G. & Ljungman, P. Assessing and screening flood exposure risks for emergency response . Research Square (preprint). 2026.
• Fuso Nerini, F., Adshead, D., Thacker, S., Pant, R. & Hall, J.W. Breaking the cycle of underinvestment in climate-resilient energy infrastructure . Nature Energy. 2025. 

Contacts