About this workstream

In this Phase 2 workstream, participants worked to build understanding of what internet resilience could look like in long-term climate scenarios, as experienced by communities, households, businesses, and New Zealand society more broadly.

End of Phase 2 progress update: November 2025

Over three sessions, participants shared their knowledge and experiences around climate change and extreme weather impacts on Internet infrastructure and presentations were shared by Earth Sciences New Zealand, the Climate Change Commission and Vogelmorn Community DIRT (Disaster Innovation Research and Training) project.

Network members worked together collaboratively to imagine a positive scenario of what Internet resilience could look like in a climate change-impacted Aotearoa in 2050. We used a “5 Rs of resilience” (relationships, robustness, redundancy, resources and rapid response) to guide us in this scenario planning.

Vision

From the scenario work to date, we propose a working vision in 2 parts:

• Resilient communities and organisations have relationships and resources which allow them to function through, and bounce back after, Internet outages.
• Robust communication and electricity infrastructure, supported by redundancies, means Internet outages are limited and restoration is rapid.

About the scenarios

In two groups, IICR members discussed aspects of resilience in a rural and urban environment, centering on a pharmacy and a community centre. Through these scenarios, we had the chance to think about the technological context we might be operating in and the different systems and activities that might support resilience.

Scenario 1: A neighbourhood pharmacy in an urban area

![The slide is titled “Urban Scenario 2050: technology context. The text of the slide reads:

In our 2050 scenario, we considered that: current fibre infrastructure in the later stages of useful life there’s more radio/mesh/satellite architecture to support communications; people have access to more of their health data, including from wearables; increased digital identity uptake, with some credentials stored on individuals’ devices; many digital devices rely on internet connectivity; organisational data is stored in the cloud as a matter of course (some local capacity but much is from global companies).](attachment:357847e5-0ba2-4ff1-a77f-ba2c6cf8e0c9:11_Nov_End-of-phase_meeting_network_report_back_(5).png)

Scenario 2: a community hub in a rural area

![This slide is titled “Rural/regional scenario 2050: context”. The content of the bullets on this slide read:

In our 2050 scenario, we considered that: Rural and regional areas are likely to still have less redundancy in the main network than urban and perhaps run on lower level of service so likely to experience longer and more outages – we will need to be prepared for this; More and different connectivity tech: satellite and mesh network technology could improve resilience; Use of tech likely more diverse: connected sensing (ie for livestock or geographic monitoring) and drones. Need more than just mobile network, as current, for this; Importance of data centres as core Internet infrastructure likely to be higher than today: will some be located in rural New Zealand? and how will the need for data centre connection play a role in vulnerability? What do we need locally?; Community is key to resilience: regional towns and rural centres will be important hubs for resilience in extreme weather events for surrounding communities.

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Activities in this workstream

1. Scenario Workshop 1: 23 September, 12pm, online. This workshop focused on participants sharing experiences (their own and those known to them) around internet infrastructure resilience (both what worked/helped and where connectivity issues impacted) in a Climate change context (e.g. during severe weather events) as well as introduce and explore some future climate scenarios and timelines. Further information about this workshop is below. Slides from the session can be viewed here.
2. Scenario Workshop 2: 7 October, 12pm, online. This workshop further explored climate scenarios, including risks and infrastructure pressures, and we will start to build details for scenarios around what community and internet infrastructure resilience could look like in a long term context. Earth Sciences New Zealand and the Climate Change Commission joined to present some of their work and thinking and discuss with the Network. Slides and notes from the session available to Network members here in Google Drive.