As Economist Enterprise Head, Policy and Insights, APAC, Charles Ross put it in his keynote speech at the inaugural FM Intellium Forum, “The systems that underpin all of this around computing power, water connectivity and capital are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected, harder to understand and harder to govern.”
More than that, the risk and resilience needed among data centres will be here to stay. According to Mr Ross, y-o-y growth in terms of semiconductor sales in Asia show that the region is in “a technology cycle unlike any other one, because it has massive real-world economic impact on society and countries”.
New systemic risks
One of the impacts Mr Ross touched on was “systems used to monitor AI investments from a business perspective are not keeping pace”.
“There is a resilience gap from a company perspective there as well,” he said.
In fact, according to Mr Ross, “more than 90% of data centres have experienced a material disruption in the past five years”.
But risks that flow through data centres, he continued, start with policymakers and move on to owners, developers and investors, before reaching operators and tenants.
“While the risk is fairly linear, its interconnectedness is more of a network effect, where a risk that may come up with a participant in the value chain can easily impact another one, whether it is a water-related issue or community backlash or power issue,” said Mr Ross.
“They can cascade through to greater problems across that value chain.”
He said, “It is complex managing that risk and understanding where that risk sits, and how to manage that.”
The data centre problem
As the region continues to build and invest in data centres in order to meet demand, Mr Ross pointed out that many companies are forced to choose between speed, growth, AI deployment and long-term resilience.
While he called the result not surprising, Mr Ross also noted that “it is potentially going to generate some issues further down the line”.
“How can we balance between growth and coping with future changes? That is the resilience space,” he said.
Technology obsolescence
Touching on the concept of technological obsolescence, Mr Ross highlighted that “it is not being priced into the market well enough”.
“We know how advanced the data centres today are compared to the ones from the past, and we know that trend is going to continue as well,” he said.
“As new technologies come in, we need to be able to build that resilience and update ability within data centres.”
According to Mr Ross, flexibility for technology obsolescence “must be built in from the start, because technology requirements can change faster than the asset life cycle”.
Community backlash
“Water availability impacts a data centre, which brings in a range of different issues that need to be dealt with,” said Mr Ross.
“There is a cooling issue, but there is also potentially community backlash where there is a shortage of water for communities, or brown-coloured water comes out of taps.”
He added, “There as some regulatory potential issues and challenges there, as well.”
Other implications Mr Ross listed were:
- Climate risk
- Risks for construction, government and investors
- Chip-related issues connected to semiconductor constraints through global supply chains
“Data centres will continue to test the power of water towers and supply chains on which they operate,” said Mr Ross.
This means, he continued, that “resilience is a system property, and not owned by an individual person”.
“It is a system issue because there is a lot of interconnection between operators, suppliers, communities and technology policymakers,” said Mr Ross.
Flexibility: The new asset
“Flexibility itself is going to become a real asset. If you are not thinking about that now, as you are building out, it is hard to build that flexibility in later,” said Mr Ross.
As he put it, flexibility “gives more options if built in”.
The inaugural FM Intellium Forum, with the theme ‘From risk to resilience. Building future-fit data centres.’ was held in Singapore on 1 October 2026.