Resilient Infrastructure: Design Strategies for Extreme Events

Course Description

When critical infrastructure fails during a disaster, the impact is measured in dollars and lives disrupted. Hospitals may stand but lose power within hours. Data centers can survive structurally yet collapse operationally when cooling shuts down. Communities depend on engineers to design systems that don’t just meet code, but keep functioning when the stakes are highest.

This course takes you beyond survival-focused design. You’ll explore resilience as a holistic practice that considers how structures, stormwater systems, mechanical equipment, and electrical networks interact under stress. Real resilience is not just about stronger beams or bigger pumps; it’s about anticipating how failures cascade, coordinating across disciplines, and embedding recovery into every design choice.

As a Professional Engineer, your responsibility extends past technical compliance to ethical decision-making and public trust. The lessons ahead will help you weigh trade-offs, apply performance-based strategies, and justify choices that keep essential services running. You will be prepared to design and defend infrastructure solutions that balance technical feasibility with community continuity and long-term resilience by the end.

Learning Objectives

1. Evaluate resilience strategies across civil, mechanical, and electrical systems to anticipate cascading failures and support design decisions that protect public safety and maintain community function.

2. Apply performance-based methods and risk-informed engineering practices to create infrastructure that remains operational during extreme events and changing hazard conditions.

3. Implement cross-disciplinary coordination practices that integrate technical requirements with ethical responsibilities and stakeholder needs to strengthen reliability and trust.

4. Assess cost, operability, and recovery trade-offs to design resilient infrastructure solutions that balance technical feasibility with long-term community benefit.