A universal taxonomy for natural hazard and climate risk and resilience assessments – Infrastructure edition

This report presents the Infrastructure Edition of A Universal Taxonomy for Natural Hazard and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessments. It provides a “universal language for risk and resilience assessments” to improve consistency, transparency, and communication among producers and consumers of risk information. The framework establishes a structured classification system for natural hazard and climate risk assessments across infrastructure systems, including risk and resilience taxonomies, hazard taxonomies for earthquake, flood, wind and climate change effects, and infrastructure taxonomies for electric power, potable water and roads. It also uses user personas to illustrate how the taxonomy can be applied by governments, infrastructure owners, investors, insurers, multilateral development banks and risk practitioners.

The report argues that, without a common framework, risk assessments can be “misinterpreted, misapplied, or rendered incomparable.” It defines four Risk Classes, from Basic Hazard Screening to Advanced Risk Modeling, and three Resilience Classes, from Conceptual to Implementable solutions. The report recommends aligning risk assessment methods, data requirements, outputs and resilience actions with the intended decision context, while explicitly incorporating hazard, exposure, vulnerability, infrastructure interdependencies and climate change effects into infrastructure risk and resilience assessments.