Coordinating Lead Author (Individual Consultant) for the Flagship Report on “Disaster and Climate Resilient Infrastructure”

Background and context

The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) is a multi-stakeholder global partnership of national governments, UN agencies and programmes, multilateral development banks and financing mechanisms, the private sector, and academic and knowledge institutions. It aims to address the challenges of building resilience into infrastructure systems and the development associated with it. The vision, mission, goal, and objectives of the CDRI are explicitly linked to the post-2015 development agendas. The Coalition will also contribute to the resilience of the global infrastructure systems in an increasingly interconnected world. The CDRI intends to publish a biennial Flagship report on Global Infrastructure Resilience titled Disaster and Climate Resilient Infrastructure. The report will be CDRI’s principal vehicle for engaging and focusing the attention of a global audience of political leaders, policy makers, practitioners and researchers. The Flagship report will contribute to the development of the Strategic Priorities of the CDRI around Research and Knowledge Management and Advocacy, Communication and Partnerships. The Flagship report is expected to be launched in 2023. The report is envisaged to be based on five key pillars. These are:

1. Pillar 1 Global Infrastructure Risk Model: This will entail the update and enhancement of the existing Global Risk Model (GRM) developed for the United Nations in 2017 along with a sophisticated analysis of the disaster and climate risk to infrastructure systems. It will include developing an infrastructure inventory or proxies, sourcing infrastructure exposure data and vulnerability functions, hazard risk assessment and multi- hazard probabilistic risk modelling.. It will contemplate risk to infrastructure in the following sectors (power and energy, transport and telecommunications) as well as local and social infrastructure and will produce a set of probabilistic financial risk metrics for each country or territory, such as Loss Exceedence Curves (LEC), Average Annual Loss (AAL) and Probable Maximum Loss (PML).
2. Pillar 2 Global Infrastructure Resilience Index: To highlight progress across countries and regions in the achievement of disaster and climate resilient infrastructure an Index will be developed. It will combine metrics from the Global Infrastructure Risk Model of 8 with economic metrics of infrastructure investment and surveys of the quality of infrastructure governance.
3. Pillar 3 Nature Based Solutions: Every edition of the Flagship report will include a thematic section that will examine policy challenges, global best practices, case studies and evidence to provide a state-of-the art review. The proposed theme for the 2020 edition will be nature-based solutions for enhancing disaster and climate resilience.
4. Pillar 4 Progress Monitoring: This will include reviewing the progress towards achieving the goals and targets of the Sendai Framework and other associated international commitments on disaster and climate risk reduction and assessing countries’ progress in achieving them. The progress towards disaster and climate resilient infrastructure, by building on the evidence generated through CDRI initiatives across its Strategic Priorities will also be reviewed under this pillar.
5. Pillar 5 Financing Infrastructure Resilience: Innovative financial tools and mechanisms to finance resilient infrastructure will be explored under this pillar. The component will comprise updating estimates of infrastructure investment for new and renewed infrastructure in different countries, infrastructure investments and their feasibility in the disaster and climate risk perspective, risk adjusted returns on infrastructure investment especially in the context of climate change uncertainties.

The Disaster and Climate Resilient Infrastructure report will be guided by a high-level International Advisory Board, the Members of which will be invited by the CDRI Secretariat. The Board will review and approve the draft Flagship Report before publication and will then advise the development of the concept and overall direction of future editions. The CDRI will be inviting its members including governments, multilateral development banks, bilateral agencies, technical and academic organisations to contribute material to the different sections of the report.

Objectives

The main objectives of the assignment are to draft the report, provide strategic guidance during the development of the report, coordinate with and supervise the stakeholders and provide advice at the various stages of the report as required.

Period of engagement

The duration of the assignment will be 18 months.

Qualification criteria

Evaluation Criteria for Qualification

• Advanced university degree at the doctorate level, in a field relevant to disaster and climate resilient infrastructure;
• Minimum 20 years of relevant experience in research, policy and practice in disaster risk management and resilience.

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