How Orion Uses the Resilience Explorer® Platform to Protect Canterbury's People and Infrastructure
4 MIN READ
Dr Andrew Allison
Technical Director
How Orion Uses the Resilience Explorer® Platform to Protect Canterbury's People and Infrastructure Overview When critical infrastructure fails during climate events, the costs are devastating—not just financially, but for the families, farms, and businesses left without power. For Orion Group, which serves 220,000 connections across central Canterbury, preventing these failures before they occur is essential. Orion has implemented Urban Intelligence's bespoke Resilience Explorer® platform to shift from reactive repairs to proactive risk mitigation. Through advanced risk insights and interactive scenario modelling, the platform enables Orion to identify vulnerabilities, test potential impacts, and implement preventive measures that reduce disaster-related costs.
About Orion Group
Orion Group serves over 220,000 connections through 8,000 kilometres of overhead lines across central Canterbury, protecting both urban families and remote rural communities increasingly threatened by climate risks.
Orion Group need to understand how climate risks translate into real impacts, however traditional GIS systems lack analytical depth and specialised expertise. For this, they turned to Resilience Explorer®.
Current Implementation
Climate Reporting: Resilience Explorer supports climate risk reporting to Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL), generating the analytical depth required for credible disclosure reporting.
Risk Literacy: The platform keeps Orion's board informed about community risks and enables consistent reporting across the business.
Proactive Risk Mitigation Applications
Asset Lifecycle Management: The platform enables smarter maintenance decisions, allowing Orion to anticipate equipment failures before they leave families without power during extreme weather.
Engineering Triage: Teams prioritise investigations at vulnerable zone substations, ensuring resources focus where communities face greatest risk.
Wildfire Risk Management: Wildfire hazard mapping enables targeted protective measures, with teams using data to triage fuse installation and interventions that prevent devastating power losses.
Community Energy Services: The platform identifies remote communities who might become isolated during climate events. As Orion's Head of Sustainability & Risk, Pip Newland, explains, "that kind of ability to identify isolated communities is really key"—because behind every data point is a rural family or elderly residents depending on electricity.
Strategic Value
Unlike conventional systems offering basic mapping, the platform provides sophisticated vulnerability assessment capabilities. As Pip Newland emphasises, "it's not just a mapping tool"—integrated analytics enable comprehensive understanding of how climate risks translate into operational, financial, and community impacts.
Ready to Prevent Disaster Costs?
Discover how the Resilience Explorer® platform can transform your approach from reactive repairs to proactive risk mitigation. Connect with Urban Intelligence to explore how predictive insights can help prevent damage and reduce costs before disasters strike.
How Orion Uses the Resilience Explorer® Platform to Protect Canterbury's People and Infrastructure
When critical infrastructure fails during climate events, the costs are devastating, not just financially, but for the families, farms, and businesses left without power.
