Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015
Making development sustainable: The future of disaster risk management


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Part III - Chapter 10
Box 10.2 Key activities related to economic development in the HFA
(ii) Social and economic development practices

(f) Protect and strengthen critical public facilities and physical infrastructure […] through proper design, retrofitting and re-building, in order to render them adequately resilient to hazards.

(iii) Land-use planning and other technical measures

(o) Mainstream disaster risk considerations into planning procedures for major infrastructure projects, including the criteria for design, approval and implementation of such projects and considerations based on social, economic and environmental impact assessments.
concentration and value creation in hazard-prone areas, Priority for Action 4 suggests a number of key activities that indirectly relate to managing risks in the productive sectors and economic development planning, notably via infrastructure protection and public-private partnerships (Box 10.2).
As in other areas, the absence of consistent output indicators makes it difficult to assess progress against these key activities systematically, and what little innovation can be identified has occurred largely outside of the disaster risk management sector and has not been captured in HFA progress reports.
Infrastructure and critical facilities
Data on progress in ensuring that infrastructure and critical facilities are designed or built in a way that reduces disaster risk is hard to find. Major infrastructure projects normally incorporate hazard resistance specifications into their design and construction. However, as Japan discovered to its cost after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, these specifications may not be sufficient to protect against the most severe events. In this way, building and safety codes can create a false sense of security and actually encourage greater investment in hazard-exposed areas, contributing to increased intensive risks (Hallegatte et al., 2010

Hallegatte, Stéphane, Nicola Ranger, Sumana Bhattacharya, Murthy Bachu, Satya Priya, K. Dhore, Farhat Rafique, P. Mathur, Nicolas Naville, Fanny Henriet, Anand Patwardhan, K. Narayanan, Subimal Ghosh, Subhankar Karmakar, Unmesh Patnaik, Abhijat Abhayankar 2010,Flood Risks, Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Benefits in Mumbai: An Initial Assessment of Socio-Economic Consequences of Present and Climate Change-Induced Flood Risks and of Possible Adaptation Options, OECD Environment Working Papers No. 27. Paris: OECD Publishing.. .
).
Progress reported by governments in assessing the disaster risks associated with major development projects, in particular large infrastructure investments, point to limited success in this area (Figure 10.5).
While major infrastructure projects commissioned to multinational construction companies are likely to be built to hazard-resistant standards, the increasingdamagetohousing,localinfrastructure, schools and health facilities in extensive disasters provides counterfactual evidence that land-use planning and building authorities in many low and middle-income countries do not apply policies, norms and standards in practice (UNISDR, 2013a

UNISDR. 2013a,Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: From Shared Risk to Shared Value: the Business Case for Disaster Risk Reduction, Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. .
). In their national HFA progress reports, many countries highlight the need to review and improve hazard resistance codes and standards on a regular basis. However, Bangladesh reports a lack of skills and human resources to monitor compliance and exercise enforcement, while Argentina reports disincentives to compliance due to real estate speculation and corruption, and Nepal highlights stark discrepancies between mandatory implementation and the actual adoption of codes.
Latin American countries such as Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama have made sustained efforts to include disaster risk as a criterion in the planning and evaluation of public investment projects (Lavell, 2014

Lavell, Allan. 2014,Disaster Risk Reduction and Public Investment Decisions: The Peruvian Case, Technical Note. First edition, August 2014. Lima.. .
; GIZ, 2012

GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit). 2012,Disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change, Experience from German development cooperation. Edited by Wolfgang Lutz, Michael Siebert and Eva Wuttge. November 2012. Frankfurt am Main.. .
; UNISDR, 2011a

UNISDR. 2011a,Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: Revealing Risk, Redefining Development, Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. .
). While these processes are
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