Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

• scott.thacker@ouce.ox.ac.uk

• Cross-Cutting Theme

Dr Scott Thacker is an Honorary Research Associate of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and an Infrastructure Sustainability and Resilience Specialist at the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). His research focusses on the strategic planning of national infrastructure, to support the achievement of long-term sustainability and resilience objectives.

In his role at UNOPS, Scott is leading efforts to develop a new generation of methodologies and tools that recognise the central importance of infrastructure to achieving national development outcomes. This includes in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework and New Urban Agenda. Central to this work is the need to influence the practical, real-world, decisions of infrastructure and built environment practitioners. This has resulted in the development of the downstream, project-scale tool: sustainable – which helps projects to be developed with a greater impact. sustainable was launched at 63rd Commission on the Status of Women to help support achievement of the gender-relevant SDGs. It has also resulted in the development of the upstream, portfolio-scale tool: NISMOD-Int – which helps the strategic planning of national infrastructures to ensure it meets long-term sustainability and resilience targets. NISMOD-Int has successfully been applied to Palestine and Curacao, with a current application underway in Saint Lucia in close collaboration with the Ministry of Finance.

As a member of the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC), Scott has developed pioneering methodology and a variety of successful collaborations with practitioners from across government and industry. Examples include: the identification of infrastructure criticality hotspots with Infrastructure UK at HM Treasury; coordinating analysis for the UK’s first systems-based assessment of national infrastructure needs the Institution of Civil Engineers; and completing a first-of-its-kind interdependency climate change risk assessment for the UK’s planned £56 billion High Speed 2 rail project.

Alongside interaction with infrastructure practitioners, Scott is an active member of the academic community and regularly publishes research on the topics of sustainable infrastructure, long-term infrastructure planning, infrastructure risk and resilience analysis, climate mitigation and adaptation, environmental sustainability and complex networks. In 2014 he was awarded the ICVRAM Young Scientist Award and in 2015, the Society for Risk Analysis Merit Prize.

Scott holds a PhD in infrastructure systems modelling from the University of Oxford, an MSc in hydro-informatics and water management from Newcastle University and a BEng in civil engineering from Loughborough University.

• Strategic infrastructure planning
• Infrastructure sustainability and resilience
• Climate mitigation and adaptation
• Infrastructure network vulnerability and risk analysis
• Infrastructure systems analysis

2021

• Adshead, D., Román García, O., Thacker, S. and Hall, J.W. (2021) Infrastructure strategies for achieving the global development agendas in small islands. Earth's Future, 9(2).

2020

• Adshead, D., Fuldauer, L.I., Thacker, S., Román García, O., Vital, S., Felix, F., Roberts, C., Wells, H., Edwin, G., Providence, A. and Hall, J.W. (2020) Saint Lucia: National Infrastructure Assessment. United Nations Office for Project Services, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Zorn, C., Pant, R., Thacker, S. and Shamseldin, A.Y. (2020) Evaluating the magnitude and spatial extent of disruptions across interdependent national infrastructure networks. ASME J. Risk Uncertainty Part B, 6(2). 020904.

2019

• Adshead, D., Thacker, S., Fuldauer, L.I. and Hall, J.W. (2019) Delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals through long-term infrastructure planning. Global Environmental Change, 59.
• Fuldauer, L.I., Ives, M.C., Adshead, D., Thacker, S. and Hall, J.W. (2019) Participatory planning of the future of waste management in small island developing states to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals. Journal of Cleaner Production, 223: 147-162.
• Ives, M.C., Hickford, A.J., Adshead, D., Thacker, S., Hall, J.W., Nicholls, R.J., Sway, T., Abu Ayyash, M., Jones, R. and O'Reagan, N. (2019) A systems-based assessment of Palestine's current and future infrastructure requirements. Journal of Environmental Management, 234: 200-213.
• Koks, E., Pant, R., Thacker, S. and Hall, J.W. (2019) Understanding business disruption and economic losses due to electricity failures and flooding. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science: 1-18.
• Oughton, E.J., Ralph, D., Pant, R., Leverett, E., Copic, J., Thacker, S., Dada, R., Ruffle, S., Tuveson, M. and Hall, J.W. (2019) Stochastic counterfactual risk analysis for the vulnerability assessment of cyber-physical attacks on electricity distribution infrastructure networks. Risk Analysis, 39(9): 2012-2031.
• Thacker, S., Adshead, D., Fay, M., Hallegatte, S., Harvey, M., Meller, H., O'Regan, N., Rozenberg, J., Watkins, G., and Hall, J.W. (2019) Infrastructure for sustainable development. Nature Sustainability, 2(4): 324-331.
• Thacker, S., Adshead, D., Morgan, G., Crosskey, S., Bajpai, A., Ceppi, P., Hall, J.W. and O'Regan, N. (2019) Infrastructure: Underpinning Sustainable Development. United Nations Office for Project Services, Copenhagen, Denmark.

2018

• Adshead, D., Fuldauer, L., Thacker, S., Hickford, A., Rouhet, G., Muller, W.S., Hall, J.W. and Nicholls, R. (2018) Evidence-based infrastructure: Curacao. National infrastructure systems modelling to support sustainable and resilient infrastructure development. United Nations Office for Project Services, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Pant, R., Zorn, C., Thacker, S. and Hall, J.W. (2018) Systemic Resilience Metrics for Interdependent Infrastrucutre Networks. Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Reliability Engineering and Risk Management (6ISRERM) 31 May - 1 June 2018, Singapore.
• Thacker, S., Hall, J.W., Adshead, D., Crosskey, S., Morgan, G. and Jones, R. (2018) Engineering For Sustainable Development. United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Zorn, C., Davies, A., Robinson, T., Pant, R., Wotherspoon, L., and Thacker, S. (2018) Infrastructure failure propagations and recovery strategies from an alpine fault earthquake scenario. 16th European Conference on Earthquake Engineering.. 1-12.

2017

• Hall, J.W., Thacker, S., Ives, M.C., Cao, Y., Chaudry, M., Blainey, S.P. and Oughton, E.J. (2017) Strategic analysis of the future of national infrastructure. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Civil Engineering, 170(1): 39-47.
• Ives, M. and Thacker, S. (2017) How civil engineers can help the UK meet the Paris Agreement on climate. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Civil Engineering, 170(1).
• Nesheli, M.M., Ceder, A., Ghavamirad, F. and Thacker, S. (2017) Environmental impacts of public transport systems using real-time control method. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 51: 216-226.
• Pant, R., Hall, J.W., Thacker, S., Barr, S. and Alderson, D. (2017) National scale risk analysis of interdependent infrastructure network failures due to extreme hazards. ITRC working paper series Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK.
• Pant, R., Thacker, S. and Hall, J. (2017) System-of-systems Framework for Global Infrastructure Vulnerability Assessments. GGKP Annual Conference, November 27-28, Washington DC, US.
• Pant, R., Thacker, S., Hall, J.W. and Alderson, D. (2017) Critical infrastructure impact assessment due to flood exposure. Journal of Flood Risk Management.
• Thacker, S., Barr, S., Pant, R., Hall, J.W. and Alderson, D. (2017) Geographic Hotspots of Critical National Infrastructure. Risk Analysis.
• Thacker, S., Hall, J.W. and Pant, R. (2017) Preserving Key Topological and Structural Features in the Synthesis of Multilevel Electricity Networks for Modeling of Resilience and Risk. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 24(1).
• Thacker, S., Hall, J.W., Russell, T., Pant, R., Leung, J. and Koks, E. (2017) System-of-systems infrastructure modelling to support national sustainable development outcomes. Proceedings of the 2017 International Symposium of Next Generation Infrastructure, London, UK
• Thacker, S., Kelly, S., Pant, R., Hall, J.W., (2017) Evaluating the Benefits of Adaptation of Critical Infrastructures to Hydrometeorological Risks. Society for Risk Analysis.
• Thacker, S., Pant, R., Hall, J.W. (2017) System-of-Systems Formulation and Disruption Analysis for Multi-Scale Critical National Infrastructures. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 167: 30-41.
• Thacker, S., Russell, T., Hall, J.H. (2017) The national infrastructure systems model for international contexts (NISMOD-Int). Proceedings of the 2017 annual meeting on Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, Oxford, UK.. 28-29.

2016

• Kelly, S., Leverett, E., Oughton, E.J., Copic, J., Thacker, S., Pant, R., Pryor, L., Kassara, G., Evan, T., Ruffle, S.J., Tuveson, M., Coburn, A.W., Ralph, D. and Hall, J.W. (2016) Integrated Infrastructure: Cyber Resiliency in Society, Mapping the Consequences of an Interconnected Digital Economy. Cambridge Risk Framework series Centre for Risk Studies, University of Cambridge
• Pant, R., Thacker, S., Hall, J.W., Alderson, D. and Barr, S. (2016) Critical infrastructure impact assessment due to flood exposure. Journal of Flood Risk Management.
• Pant, R., Thacker, S., Hall, J.W., Alderson, D., Barr, S. and Kelly, S. (2016) Analysing the risks of failure in interdependent infrastructure networks. In, Hall, J.W., Tran, M., Hickford, A.J. and Nicholls, R.J. (eds.) The future of national infrastructure: a system-of-systems approach. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. pp. 241-267.

2014

• Barr, S., Alderson, D., Robson, C., Otto, A., Hall, J.W., Thacker, S. and Pant, R. (2014) Building interdependent infrastructure networks and customer assignment models for understanding spatial demands. Proceedings of the 2014 conference on The Future of National Infrastructure Systems and Economic Prosperity, University of Cambridge, UK
• Hu, X., Hall, J.W. and Thacker, S. (2014) Too Big to Fail? The Spatial Vulnerability of the Chinese Infrastructure System to Flooding Risks. Vulnerability, Uncertainty and Risk: 704-714.
• Thacker, S., Pant, R. and Hall, J.W. (2014) Characterizing the Vulnerability of Future Configurations of Great Britain’s Electricity Network Infrastructure to Climate-related Hazards. Vulnerability, Uncertainty and Risk: 648-657.

2013

• Barr, S., Alderson, D., Robson, C., Otto, A., Hall, J.W., Thacker, S. and Pant, R. (2013) A National Scale Infrastructure Database and Modelling Environment for the UK. In: Campbell P. and Perez P. (Eds), Proceedings of the International Symposium of Next Generation Infrastructure, Wollongong, Australia.
• Pant, R., Thacker, S., Hall, J.W., Barr, S. and Alderson, D. (2013) Analyzing interdependent infrastructure provisions under extreme climate risks. In: Campbell P. and Perez P. (Eds), Proceedings of the International Symposium of Next Generation Infrastructure, Wollongong, Australia.