FOREWORD

The UNDP-CDRI Biennial Report on Global Infrastructure Resilience plugs a critical gap in the ongoing discourse around infrastructure resilience. Countries around the world, including the members of CDRI, will make unprecedented investments in infrastructure in the coming decades. The first edition of this Biennial Report is borne out of our collective consciousness and insight, and provides the analytical foundation that substantiates the case for investing in infrastructure resilience.

The Report presents a compelling economic, financial and political imperative for investing in resilience, based on a new cutting-edge Global Infrastructure Risk Model and Resilience Index (GIRI) the first-ever fully probabilistic global risk assessment of infrastructure assets in all sectors. The GIRI estimates the growing risks to infrastructure from major hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, tropical cyclones and landslides and generates financial risk metrics, which can enable governments, financial institutions and investors to better understand and appreciate the contingent liabilities for which they are responsible.

Furthermore, financial risk metrics enable the estimation of the resilience dividend, understood as the full range of benefits that accrue from investing in infrastructure resilience. These include avoided asset loss, reduced service disruption, better quality and reliable public services, accelerated economic growth and social development, reduced carbon emissions, enhanced biodiversity, improved air and water quality, and more efficient land use, among others. Over the lifecycle of most infrastructure assets, the resilience dividend is normally several times greater than the additional investment required.

Investing in infrastructure resilience is essential to drive progress across the Sustainable Development Goals. The Report, therefore, will be of immense use for policy makers and financial institutions to better understand and appreciate the need to provide an enhanced level of financial support to developing countries across the world to pursue investment in this critical area. Failing to invest in resilient infrastructure and societies in this era of climate change is perhaps the biggest risk of all.