Overview of engineering options for increasing infrastructure resilience: Increasing infrastructure resilience background report

Many parts of the world are subject to a variety of natural hazards. As the population of the world has increased, people live in and infrastructure has been built in locations where natural hazard impacts are severe. Critical infrastructure (power, transport, and water assets) are particularly vulnerable to natural hazards. Damage to these components has a cascading impact that extends not only to the assets themselves, but also to the population at large and to local and national economies. Accordingly, improvements in design and construction that can reduce the vulnerability and that are cost-effective can enhance the resilience of surrounding communities. To address this critical shortcoming, the World Bank Group has sponsored a project to investigate the vulnerability of key infrastructure, mitigation/improvement measures, and the costs that are associated with such improvements.

The report affiliated with this project summarizes the infrastructure that was considered, the expected level of damage, and the suggested improvements, and it provides an estimate of the costs and benefits that are associated with such improvements. This background document presents a more detailed treatment of the topic and provides background information and supporting data.