The rapid construction of AI infrastructure is creating new resilience challenges for data centre operators, as facilities become larger, more power-dense and increasingly dependent on complex power, cooling and connectivity systems.
That is according to a new report from Allianz Commercial, which analysed how the changing design and scale of data centres is affecting the severity of failures across the sector.
Annual investment in data centres globally is expected to rise from around $500 billion in 2024 to more than $1 trillion as early as 2027, with spending extending beyond the facilities themselves into electricity generation, grid infrastructure, cooling, networking and semiconductors.
While the US and China are expected to account for around 62% of new capacity added through to 2030, the UK, Germany and Ireland are expected to remain major European data centre markets. However, Allianz expects some of the fastest European growth to take place in Spain, Finland and Denmark, where access to power and planning conditions can be more favourable.
For operators, however, the scale of that investment is also changing what happens when something goes wrong.
Bigger campuses, bigger consequences
Allianz analysed 221 data centre-related claims worth approximately €677 million, finding that fire was responsible for more than half of losses by value. Water damage, meanwhile, was the most frequent cause of claims, followed by wilful acts, fire and equipment breakdown.
Europe accounted for 53% of claims by volume and 38% by value, making it the largest region for the number of incidents included in the analysis.
The figures are particularly notable as data centre campuses continue to become more complex. Hyperscale and colocation sites can bring together multiple tenants, servers, construction activity, power infrastructure, cooling equipment and connectivity within the same campus.
That means what may previously have been an isolated equipment failure has the potential to affect numerous systems and customers simultaneously.
Allianz highlighted incidents involving damaged external cooling equipment, fires caused by hot works and power disturbances delaying the start-up of facilities, each of which resulted in losses of between €50 million and €100 million.
Long lead times for replacement equipment could make matters worse. The report warns that some switchgear can take as long as 80 weeks to procure, while transformers can have lead times of around 50 weeks, potentially turning an equipment failure into a much longer period of disruption.
That puts even more emphasis on preventative maintenance, redundancy and ensuring operators understand where dependencies exist across a facility.
Power and climate risks move up the agenda
Those risks are not limited to what happens within the data centre itself.
Around 79% of existing global data centre capacity is located in areas Allianz considers exposed to heightened natural catastrophe risk, while 54% faces chronic heat and drought stress. The report warns that some of the markets experiencing the fastest data centre growth are also among those facing greater climate exposure.
Power remains another major concern. Allianz argues that access to electricity, grid connections, planning permission, specialist equipment and skilled workers are increasingly the factors determining how quickly new capacity can be delivered, rather than access to finance alone. That will sound familiar to developers in the UK.
The Government has itself acknowledged that timely connections to the electricity network are the single biggest blocker to establishing its AI Growth Zones, with lengthy connection queues capable of holding up new AI infrastructure.
There is also considerably more riding on the resilience of those facilities than there once was. The UK designated data centres as Critical National Infrastructure in September 2024, putting the sector alongside infrastructure such as energy and water in recognition of its growing importance to the economy and wider society.
