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.
How its disciplines connect
The map
DepartmentDisciplineNexus Standard taught here
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.
Infrastructure, Energy and IndustryAny placeTwin builder
- 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
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.
Places5
Layers5
iCredits
- Terrain Surface height in whole metres on a grid of about a hundred and twenty metres, read from one overview of the 30 m product at build time. Produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved. read 2026-10-17. Estimate: A surface model: trees and roofs are in the heights. Relief is exaggerated for legibility and the factor is printed on the stage.
- Buildings Footprints of the central city extruded to their tagged height, and a count of buildings per 150 m cell over the rest of the box. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. data as of 2026-10-17. Estimate: Where a building has no height or levels tag its height is an estimate by use, flagged in the data and shown in a lighter tone.
- Roads and rail Motorways, trunk, primary and secondary roads and the railway lines, with their length in kilometres. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. data as of 2026-07-15.
- Lifeline assets Substations with their tagged voltage, port land, the airport, hospitals, railway stations and water works, each as one point. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. data as of 2026-05-31.
- Power plants Every plant inside the box, with capacity in MW and primary fuel, from the 2021 release. Power plants: Global Power Plant Database v1.3.0 (2021), World Resources Institute and partners, CC BY 4.0. release 1.3.0, 2021-06-02. Estimate: A 2021 snapshot, never current operating status.
Why this place: Wellington's regional lifelines programme, which began with a published 1991 case study of its lifelines in earthquakes, is a reference case for lifelines engineering, so the twin teaches on the place where the practice was named. One box of about twenty by eighteen kilometres holds a dense harbour city on steep terrain, its port and airport, the rail terminus and the Hutt corridor, the substations that feed the city and two wind farms in the western hills, so every lifeline family is present and legible at one scale. Data quality: OpenStreetMap building and road coverage of New Zealand is complete, Copernicus DEM GLO-30 covers the terrain at thirty metres, and the Global Power Plant Database lists the plants.
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).
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.
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Layers 2
Energy now
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Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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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
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).
Departments and their disciplines
Each card names the department's disciplines and its open courses.
Disciplines of the faculty
Each discipline once, in its department.
How Infrastructure, Energy and Industry is organised, as a process you can run
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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.
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
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.
Where the field is moving
Emerging areas, the technologies changing practice and the bodies whose work sets the field's methods.
What is changing now
The newest developments cited on the faculty's discipline pages, sources checked on 16 October 2026.
Research and tools
Research and preprints as they are published, by discipline, with the faculty's other tools.
The hub lists the newest research and preprints for 12 disciplines, each with its source and date. Open the research hub
Critical infrastructure and lifelines, Cities, housing and the built environment, Transport, ports and logistics, Reliability, safety and resilience engineering, Energy systems and the energy transition, Climate and energy technologies, Critical minerals, mining and extractives, Energy transition risk and grid integration, Water and wastewater systems, Telecommunications and digital infrastructure, Trade, supply chains and geoeconomics, Advanced industry, manufacturing and materials
Where to start, and where it leads
The faculty's entry course, then its flagship pathways and the Academy flagship in Nexus-Based Risk Management.
Courses of the faculty
Courses whose primary discipline is in this faculty.
Where these subjects are practised
Learning and connections
Labs used in the faculty's courses
Programmes that span faculties
Each programme joins disciplines from more than one faculty under an institute of the Academy, and appears on every faculty it spans.
Institutes that convene the faculty
Across the ecosystem
Take part in Infrastructure, Energy and Industry
Start from who you are.
Questions, answers and key terms
Is study here free?
What does completing a course give me?
Where do the data and the places come from?
How do I take part beyond the faculty's courses?
Key terms
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.
Department
A body of related disciplines within the Faculty of Infrastructure, Energy and Industry, with its own courses and pathways.
Primary discipline
The discipline a course mainly teaches; a course may also teach up to two other disciplines.
Lifeline
An infrastructure system whose failure cascades across society: electricity, water and wastewater, transport, telecommunications, health and emergency services.
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.
Around the 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.