Practice
Understanding of assets, operations and systems
Aspect contributions
How this practice contributes to the green port aspects.
| Aspect | Role | Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Climate Adaptation | Core | - |
| Risk Management | Secondary | - |
| Development Planning | Secondary | - |
| Engineering Design | Secondary | - |
| Maintenance | Secondary | - |
Summary
Ports can enhance climate resilience by systematically understanding their critical assets and the vulnerabilities those assets face under changing climate conditions. The first step is identifying and mapping key infrastructure, such as wharves, cranes, navigation channels, storage facilities, power systems, and access routes, and evaluating how essential each is to maintaining operations. Once these critical assets are defined, ports can assess exposure to climate risks including sea-level rise, storm surge, flooding, extreme heat, and increased storm intensity.
Vulnerability concerns an asset’s susceptibility to harm and capacity to cope or adapt. Risk assessment considers hazards, exposure and vulnerability to assess possible consequences (ISO, 2021; PIANC, 2020). For example, low-lying berths may be highly exposed to flooding, while electrical systems may be sensitive to heat or water damage. This analysis helps prioritize which assets require protection, reinforcement, or relocation.
Adaptation strategies can then be developed (see below practices). Importantly, resilience planning should be integrated into long-term capital investment and asset management plans. Scenario analysis and climate projections enable ports to make flexible, forward-looking decisions under uncertainty. Continuous monitoring and periodic reassessment ensure strategies remain effective as climate conditions evolve. By aligning asset knowledge with risk-based planning, ports can reduce disruptions, protect investments, and ensure safe, reliable operations in the face of climate change.
Details
Climate change resilience and adaptation have become strategic priorities for ports because they are long-lived, asset-intensive facilities that play a critical role in global trade and supply chains. Rising sea levels, increased storm intensity, coastal flooding, extreme temperatures, changes in wind patterns, and more frequent disruption events have the potential to affect both physical infrastructure and day-to-day port operations. As a result, climate risk assessment is increasingly used as the foundation for resilience planning and investment decision-making.
A key step in the climate risk assessment process is developing a comprehensive understanding of port assets and operations. Ports are complex systems comprising:
- marine infrastructure such as wharves, berths, breakwaters, navigation channels and seawalls
- as well as landside assets including container yards, warehouses, road and rail connections, utilities, fuel facilities, information technology systems and administrative buildings.
Understanding the location, condition, criticality and interdependencies of these assets is essential for assessing their vulnerability to current and future climate hazards.
However, climate resilience extends beyond physical infrastructure. Port operations, including vessel movements, cargo handling, logistics, maintenance activities, workforce access and emergency response functions, must also be evaluated. Extreme weather events can:
- disrupt shipping schedules
- reduce equipment performance
- affect workforce safety and accessibility
- interrupt power supplies
- create cascading impacts throughout regional and international supply chains.
Consequently, climate risk assessments must consider both asset exposure and the operational consequences of climate-related disruptions.
Leading practice climate risk assessments typically involve identifying critical assets and operational functions, assessing their exposure to climate hazards, evaluating vulnerabilities, and determining the resulting risks to safety, service delivery, financial performance and business continuity. This process often includes asset inventories, operational mapping, stakeholder engagement and scenario-based analysis that considers future climate conditions over the lifespan of port infrastructure. Understanding which assets and operations are most critical can enable port authorities and operators to prioritize adaptation actions and allocate resources effectively.
The outcomes of these assessments support the development of targeted adaptation measures. These may include upgrading or elevating infrastructure, improving drainage systems, strengthening coastal protection, revising operational procedures, enhancing emergency management capabilities, diversifying supply chain pathways and incorporating climate resilience into asset management and capital investment programs. Adaptation planning is most effective when it recognizes that ports operate as interconnected systems where the resilience of individual assets influences overall operational performance.
Ultimately, understanding assets and operations within the climate risk assessment process provides the evidence base needed to improve port resilience. By identifying vulnerabilities and prioritizing adaptation actions, ports can reduce disruption, protect critical infrastructure, maintain service continuity and strengthen their capacity to operate effectively under changing climate conditions.
Enabling factors
Climate adaptation can be strongly assisted through laws and regulations, such as those that, in some jurisdictions, require climate risk assessment, disclosure and resilience planning. National strategies in particular, such as National Adaptation Plans, as well as sector strategies and institutional frameworks can also assist greatly. Clear national policy signals that translate international commitments into sector-specific expectations for ports are a key enabler: where a national adaptation plan, a port sector master plan, or a sovereign climate commitment provides a credible trajectory, port authorities, operators, and financiers align more readily. The policy environment (laws, regulations, strategies, institutional frameworks) within climate change understanding and climate change planning is a rapidly developing landscape. Of particular note are the requirements for ports to undertake reporting and inherent as an incentive is to reduce risk to the ports itself, assisting with planning and avoiding costs. Ring-fenced green finance windows, including concessional capital from multilateral development banks and the ADB-managed ASEAN Catalytic Green Finance Facility (ACGF), are a critical enabler for first-of-kind investment. Integration of port-relevant activities into the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance provides a further enabler by giving lenders and issuers a shared reference.
Climate adaptation can be assisted through guidelines and improved standards. Further, the expectations of standards in climate adaptation planning varies greatly, therefore standardization of standards is an enabler. Regional knowledge exchange has emerged as an enabler in its own right. DMC ports benefit from structured opportunities to learn from peers in comparable operating and regulatory environments, alongside examples from other regions. Anchor ports that publish transparent sustainability disclosures and host peer delegations play a catalytic role for surrounding ports in their national and sub-regional contexts. Structured ADB technical assistance, particularly for project preparation, gap analysis, and governance strengthening, can help ports convert ambition into investment-ready projects.
Sustainable procurement enables climate-resilient port development by embedding environmental, social and governance considerations into investment, design, construction and operational decisions. Through lifecycle-based purchasing, climate-risk criteria, supplier accountability and resilience standards, procurement helps ensure infrastructure is adaptable, durable and aligned with long-term sustainability objectives, reducing climate vulnerabilities while supporting responsible economic development and supply chain resilience.
Finally, partnerships with shipping lines, cargo owners, tenants, and energy utilities are recurring enablers; no port advances its green agenda successfully in isolation from its value chain. Some climate adaptation measures in particular are heavily reliant on partnerships and collaboration, including those requiring additional land, share land uses and nature-based adaptation.