Paving the Way for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure - UN CC:Learn

Chapter 4: A ‘No-Regrets’ Risk-Based Approach to Climate Proofing Public InfrastructureReducing disaster risk requires — and provides opportunities for — political leadership. Politicalcommitment at the highest level is essential to drive action across all sectors and to buildinstitutional linkages between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction fields.Multistakeholder participation is a key to durable results. Disasters and climate change affect all ofsociety, and therefore disaster risk reduction and adaptation solutions must involve all sectors andcivil society, including the private sector, and incorporate community engagement.Kovacs, P., and H. Kunreuther (2001). “Managing CatastrophicRisk: Lessons from Canada.” Paper presented at the ICLR/IBCEarthquake Conference. 23 March 2001, Simon Fraser University,Vancouver, Canada.An essential element of preventing future disaster losses involves reducing vulnerability to hazards bybuilding community resiliency. A strategy to build resiliency must begin with an assessment of the currentvulnerability of the region. This requires information on the design of residential, commercial and publicsector structures and infrastructure and their locations in relation to various hazards.The use of GIS to incorporate natural conditions (e.g. geological data) and structural information for aregion has enabled scientists and engineers to estimate potential damage and losses from differentscenarios. With respect to loss reduction activities, one should evaluate the costs and the expected benefitsover time of adopting specific mitigation measures. The quality of this essential planning informationvaries considerably from country to country, and from community to community. Frequently CCA andDRM efforts for developing and emerging economies suffer from the absence of foundational data.Detailed hazard assessments are a requirement for catastrophic risk management models. Once a community’svulnerability has been assessed, what can be done to increase its resiliency to the consequences ofnatural disasters? Strategies for reducing losses and providing financial protection include well-enforcedbuilding codes, the use of warnings and evacuation plans to reduce loss of lives and damage at the onsetof an event, and recovery strategies such as insurance and financial assistance following a disaster. Thesepolicy tools complement each other: well-enforced building codes reduce the need for financial assistanceafter a disaster and warning and evacuation procedures reduce the need for emergency hospitalcare in the affected region.The full range of activities can be clustered into three critical elements of an effective emergency preparednessstrategy — prevention, response and recovery.Disaster preventionAdaptation involves investments before disaster strikes, actions designed to strengthen society’s abilityto resist the impact of future perils. An adaptation or mitigation strategy for disaster prevention includethe following key elements:Public awareness. Informed families that are part of a culture of preparedness are best able tomanage natural hazards.Land use planning. Resilient communities keep people and structures away from areas where thehazard risk has been identified.42Paving the Way for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure: Conference Proceedings