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Illustrative: a truss under a moving load with members coloured by stress, a lattice tower swaying, or a geodesic dome

Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium · Faculty

Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry

Lifelines fail in chains: a substation trips, pumps stop, a port closes, a supply chain stalls.

02Maps

Build a twin of any place

Search any place or open the world; the layers and generators follow the faculty's subjects on the planet map, the globe and in 3D.

Wellington and its harbour: a flat plan of the faculty twin. Terrain 0 to 523 m; 83,815 buildings in the box; 5,085 footprints in the core, 2,796 with an estimated height; Roads 176 km; Rail 99 km; 57 substations; 4 port; 2 airport; 5 hospitals; 8 railway stations; 4 water works; 2 power plants, 202 MW. Contours every 100 metres from the elevation grid; buildings as counts per cell; roads and rail by class; lifeline assets as marks; power plants as marks.
Wellington and its harbour, New Zealand. Flat plan of the same data. The 3D twin opens on devices that can draw it, once its data and code have been checked; the numbers are the same either way.
  • Terrain 0 to 523 m
  • 83,815 buildings in the box
  • 5,085 footprints in the core, 2,796 with an estimated height
  • Roads 176 km
  • Rail 99 km
  • 57 substations
  • 4 port
  • 2 airport
  • 5 hospitals
  • 8 railway stations
  • 4 water works
  • 2 power plants, 202 MW
Credits and dates per layer are listed under the stage. Relief in the twin is exaggerated ×1.5 for legibility.

Drag to move, right drag or Shift with a drag to turn and tilt, Ctrl with the wheel to zoom. Keyboard: arrows move, Shift with arrows turn and tilt, + and – zoom, 0 resets, V steps through the views, Escape clears.

Flat plan of the same data. The 3D twin opens on devices that can draw it, once its data and code have been checked; the numbers are the same either way.

The boundaries, names and designations shown do not imply any judgement on the legal status of any territory, or any endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Countries: Natural Earth (public domain).

03Live map

Energy now in New Zealand

Night-time lights, fires and gas flares, sunshine and heat, the signals of energy use, supply and demand, over New Zealand.

The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.

Layers 2

Energy now

Latest available

NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth

Loading the latest NASA imagery.

Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.

Energy now, framed on New Zealand.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.

Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONETSources and licences

  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS Black Marble night-time lights, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; distributed by the NASA Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), VIIRS 375 m active fire product, NASA LANCE; vector tiles via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • MERRA-2 reanalysis, NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office; distributed by the NASA GES DISC; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • MODIS and VIIRS atmosphere products, NASA LANCE and LAADS DAAC; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
  • Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
  • Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
  • Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
  • Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
  • NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • Past year, daily temperature (ERA5 via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
  • Past year, daily temperature and sunshine (NASA POWER): These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science/Applied Science Program..
  • Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
  • Optional layers (8 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.

Layers and dates

  • Night-time lights, daily: VIIRS Black Marble (VNP46A2), NASA LAADS DAAC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Active fires and thermal anomalies: VIIRS NOAA-20 375 m (FIRMS), NASA LANCE FIRMS · 13 Oct 2026
  • Incoming sunlight at the surface over land, monthly mean: MERRA-2, NASA GMAO / GES DISC · July 2026
  • Daytime cloud fraction: MODIS Terra, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Land surface temperature, day: VIIRS NOAA-20, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Flood water, 3-day composite: VIIRS Global Flood Product, NASA LANCE · 14 Oct 2026

04The faculty's method

How one outage becomes four: lifeline dependencies and the buffers that hold them

Lifelines fail in chains. A substation outage reaches water pumps, hospital generators and telephone exchanges through dependencies, and what decides whether a city copes is the size of the buffers at each link: storage, fuel, batteries and the hours each one buys.

Sources: Rinaldi, Peerenboom and Kelly, Identifying, understanding, and analysing critical infrastructure interdependencies (2001); NIST, Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, volume 1 (2016); UNDRR, Principles for resilient infrastructure (2022).

05Departments

Departments and their disciplines

Each card names the department's disciplines and its open courses.

06Disciplines

Disciplines of the faculty

Each discipline once, in its department.

07Console

How Infrastructure, Energy and Industry is organised, as a process you can run

Press Play to run this process from this page's own data.

08Signature

How infrastructure, Energy and Industry connects the sectors

Select corners to build a signature, then hover a line to read what each sector gives and receives.

Select corners · hover lines6 / 15 relations

Signature

Energy and its partners

Energy gives power for transport and telecoms to infrastructure (0.8), pumping and treatment to water (0.5) and fertiliser, machinery and cold chains to food (0.5).

W · E · I · F · H · B

Sectors
4 of 6
Relations
6 of 15
Coupling
0.46 share of total

Strongest relations in play

  • Energy → Infrastructure · power for transport and telecoms0.8
  • Water → Energy · cooling water and hydropower0.6
  • Water → Food · irrigation0.8
  • Infrastructure → Water · pipes, dams and treatment works0.6
Teaching values for a typical city-region, not measurements for any place. Coupling is the summed strength of the relations in play, as a share of all fifteen.
09Standards and evidence

Standards and evidence, with 5 related topics

Nexus Standards the faculty teaches toward

The Nexus Standards areas whose standards the faculty's disciplines teach toward, with the number of standards and disciplines in each.

10Learning

Learning and connections

Labs used in the faculty's courses

11Take part

Take part in Infrastructure, Energy and Industry

Start from who you are.

12Questions

Questions, answers and key terms

Is study here free?
Yes. Every course and learning material of Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium, is free to study, self-paced or with a cohort. Ordinary participation has no fee; paid work, internships and fellowships are separate arrangements.
What does completing a course give me?
A completion record: the course, its version, the date and what was assessed, private by default and shared by you. It stacks into discipline, department and programme achievements. A record states what was studied and assessed and does not certify competence; it is not a licence, a professional title or an employment status.
Where do the data and the places come from?
Every faculty teaches on a twin of a real place built from open data; each layer carries its provider, licence and date, and every result on the Academy states its source. Maps and figures are indicators for teaching, never an assessment of a place.
How do I take part beyond the faculty's courses?
Form a competence cell of three to seven people, study a shared pathway, take a supervised assignment in the National Working Groups, or bring a cohort from your institution. For organisations.

Key terms

Term

Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry

The faculty studies the lifelines, cities, energy systems, industries and supply chains that concentrate exposure and carry shocks from place to place.

Term

Department

A body of related disciplines within the Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry, with its own courses and pathways.

Term

Primary discipline

The discipline a course mainly teaches; a course may also teach up to two other disciplines.

Term

Lifeline

An infrastructure system whose failure cascades across society: electricity, water and wastewater, transport, telecommunications, health and emergency services.

ReportsContribute

Contribute evidence from this page.

Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.

Risk Academy
Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry

Start in one department

Each department lists its disciplines, courses and pathways; each discipline its scope, labs, technology and key terms.