Understanding risk and resilient infrastructure investment

This publication discusses the importance of understanding risk, especially future risks from climate change, in decision-making on infrastructure investment. It highlights the need to accommodate greater uncertainty and draw on data from climate modelling and presents new approaches that can facilitate this.

The document proposes the following:

• Infrastructure investment can be better planned and decisions made in ways that reduce physical exposure and vulnerability.
• Different approaches require greater investment at the very early stages to better understand risk, be resilience-led and performance-based.
• A wider range of solutions should be considered before investment, design and construction occur.
• Infrastructure investment should sit within country strategies, regional and city strategies and sector strategies that are both resilient and environmentally sustainable.
• Donors/IFIs should spend more to bring a project to a bankable stage as greater modelling information and interpretation will be needed.