Theme 4: Building resilience through innovative infrastructure

The role of infrastructure is evolving rapidly, extending beyond basic systems to an increasingly valuable, technology-enabled ecosystem that supports long-term economic and social progress.

This year, we expect the next phase of infrastructure development and financing to be shaped by priorities such as climate adaptation, emissions mitigation, resilience to physical and cyber risks, enhanced security, and the broader transition to a low‑carbon economy. These themes – introduced in an earlier blog post – continue to guide our research as we analyse the diverse risks and structural drivers influencing the future of infrastructure.

Historically, infrastructure development has been driven by governments, but as its strategic importance grows, private capital is increasingly needed – and increasingly willing – to help move projects forward.

In Europe, robust and modern infrastructure is at the heart of the bloc’s strategic autonomy ambitions, and the economic dependencies on its development are ever increasing. Safeguards to protect against the challenges of geopolitics, geoeconomic fragmentation, climate risks and resource intensity will need to be addressed.

Innovating for resilience 

Infrastructure spans sectors such as energy, digital networks, utilities, healthcare and transport – each facing growing operational and environmental pressures. These range from physical damage caused by extreme weather to heat‑related disruption, water scarcity affecting operations, and resource dependencies that threaten the availability of critical materials.

Our diagram below shows the key sectors and challenges, along with three factors that also influence our ability to depend on robust and modern infrastructure:

• Location – Ensuring sites and structures are physically optimal for the future.
• Security – Securing critical assets and protecting against failures.
• Interdependencies – Assessing the links between each of these focus areas, and the risks and impacts.

Infrastructure is the backbone of society and economies. As significant investors in infrastructure, we believe the sector must continue to innovate to meet future challenges. This means transitioning mature systems, while scaling up developing opportunities. For investors, this is likely to propel the scale, style and thematic focus of infrastructure finance, further enhancing its position as an asset class that we believe can offer diversification benefits and an attractive long-term risk-reward profile.

Read more from our CIO Infrastructure: Is deglobalisation the answer to volatility for infrastructure investors? | AllianzGI