Bentley Pushes Digital Tools for Global Resilience at COP30
As global leaders convene in Belém for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), the focus is shifting from simply cutting emissions to actively building a more resilient world. At the heart of this shift is the role of infrastructure and technology, with industry leader Bentley Systems pushing a data-driven approach to climate action.
Bentley Systems along with its geoscience subsidiary Seequent, is taking its most engaged role yet at a climate summit, co-hosting multiple sessions in the UN’s core negotiation area.
“Resilience is not only about protecting what exists; it’s about designing systems that can adapt, evolve, and strengthen over time,” says Rodrigo Fernandes, Bentley Systems’ global sustainability director.
“This moment calls for infrastructure that can respond dynamically to changing environments and community needs,” he added.
Infrastructure—which is both crucial for resilience and responsible for about 80% of global CO2 emissions—is now central to the climate debate. The private sector’s role is therefore expanding rapidly to both decarbonize existing assets and fund massive new investments in climate-smart infrastructure.
At the summit, Bentley and Seequent are showcasing solutions built around five interconnected priorities for transforming climate ambition into tangible action:
- Climate Adaptation: Utilizing geospatial intelligence and subsurface modeling to anticipate disasters like floods and soil instability.
- Clean-Energy Transition: Accelerating the planning and delivery of renewables and optimizing power grids.
- Just and Inclusive Transition: Ensuring that infrastructure planning and green investment benefit all communities, including those in emerging economies.
- Nature-Positive Infrastructure: Embedding biodiversity data into design to ensure development strengthens, not depletes, ecosystems.
- Mobilizing Private-Sector Investment: Providing transparent data to de-risk projects and attract sustainable finance.
The company is stressing the need for a “system of systems” approach, recognizing that transportation, water, and energy networks are all interdependent. To manage this complexity, Bentley champions the use of digital twins—virtual replicas of physical assets—and AI to simulate climate stresses, reduce emissions, and lower long-term costs.
“Governments, multilateral institutions, and private companies need to think horizontally. The challenges are too interlinked. We must look at the whole ecosystem,” said Rory Linehan, Bentley’s director of infrastructure policy advancement.
In 2024, climate-related disasters caused an estimated $368 billion in losses, leaving a massive “resilience deficit.” Bentley’s position is that systemic, cross-sector collaboration—supported by digital tools—is essential to close this gap and align global infrastructure with the Paris Agreement goals.
The company also plans to announce new partnerships at COP30 to expand its ecosystem of sustainable technology solutions.
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