RRU offers climate-resilient infrastructure planning micro-credential

Learn about the Infrastructure and Climate Resilience Planning micro-credential. 

The effects of climate change are costly, especially on infrastructure such as buildings, roads, bridges, drainage and sewer systems.  

That means the people who design, build, operate and maintain infrastructure —employees, managers and policy makers from the public and private sector — need to keep their knowledge and skills current on the risks of and adaptations to climate change.  

In response, Royal Roads University Professional and Continuing Studies is partnering with the Climate Risk Institute (CRI) to build and deliver a micro-credential focused on climate-resilient infrastructure planning. 

“We know that climate change extremes are increasing in frequency and severity, and that is having an impact on our communities because we do experience infrastructure failures,” says Paul Cobb, CRI’s manager of training services. “The idea behind this credential is to help people better understand how do identify those risks and to help them design and operate infrastructure in a way that extreme events don’t have a negative impact on the communities and the services that they support.” 

 As an example, Cobb describes how a traditional road and drainage system is designed to accommodate historical weather patterns and extreme events by looking back to anticipate what’s ahead. If average global temperatures reach 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, events that happened once per century can be expected to occur once every five years – and the 1 in 100 year storms become much more extreme. These changes require a different way of thinking and doing - looking ahead at projections instead of relying on past information. 

“We need to design the system so that it can handle greater-frequency, higher-intensity extremes — we need to ensure, for example, that rainfall events don’t lead to washouts, flooding and bridge failures,” Cobb says. “We need to plan our communities and design our systems so they we aren’t as vulnerable to climate disruption This will make our communities safer and more cost-efficient the long term.”  

The Infrastructure and Climate Resilience Planning micro-credential, launched in early 2024, is aimed at early and mid-career professionals such as planners, architects, landscape architects and engineering technicians as well as those working on infrastructure or planning policy in the public sector. Students will complete two required courses and choose two from a list of electives that cover critical competencies at the intersection of planning, infrastructure, climate change risk and adaptation. Each course will take five weeks and operate in an online environment with a mix of self-paced learning made available weekly and live virtual sessions with instructors. They can complete the full suite of courses to earn the micro-credential inside six months, if they choose.  

Royal Roads and CRI have teamed up before. The courses learners take for this new credential are also part of an existing program for licensed engineers called the Infrastructure Resilience Professional (IRP) credential. While there is overlap in courses, the requirements of the credentials differ. To earn the IRP credential learners must be licensed engineers and are required to complete a set of six courses; the new credential adds new courses (such as our course for Planners), provides flexibility by allowing learners to select electives based on their interests, and requires only four courses to be completed. 

“We know there are people from diverse backgrounds who are involved in infrastructure and planning,” Cobb says. “We’ve had a range of practitioners learning alongside engineers in our courses before; now we’re making the courses more inclusive and providing a new opportunity for other practitioners to earn a recognized credential.” 

“The vulnerability of infrastructure to changing weather and climate conditions is evidenced by the increased impacts across all regions in Canada,” says Zoe MacLeod, RRU’s associate vice president, Professional and Continuing Studies. “The November 2021 flooding that destroyed BC highways and farmlands serves as a startling example of why infrastructure practitioners and planners must incorporate climate change resiliency considerations into each stage of asset and infrastructure life cycle. 

“Capacity-building to advance climate-change leadership and action has become a critical workforce requirement,” MacLeod says. “Job postings for professionals appear daily for positions requiring climate action competencies while regulators and professional associations are increasingly demanding competencies in these areas.” 

Indeed, Canada’s recently adopted National Adaptation Strategy established a target that would see 70 per cent of professionals in fields such as engineering, planning and architecture with training and skills to integrate climate resilience in their work. 

 “There is an urgent need to address the impacts and risks of climate change, and workers require rapid upskilling,” MacLeod says. “Micro-credentials present a condensed learning experience that can fill the demand for climate action in corporate, government, small-business, consulting, infrastructure services, and NGO roles.” 

Cobb couldn’t agree more. “If we can get ahead on climate change adaptation, we can avoid the very high cost of climate inaction — not just financial costs like infrastructure repairs and rebuilding, but to our health, safety.” 

Take the Infrastructure and Climate Resilience Planning micro-credential or learn more about Professional and Continuing Studies at Royal Roads.