The World Bank has released a flagship report, Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity, which finds that the average net benefit of investing in more resilient infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries would be $4.2 trillion with $4 benefit for each $1 invested.
The report lays out a framework for understanding infrastructure resilience and examines four essential infrastructure systems: power, water supply and sanitation, transport, and telecommunications. One important message is that making these systems more resilient is critical not only to avoid costly repairs but also to minimize the wide-ranging consequences of infrastructure disruptions for the livelihoods and well-being of people.
The report uses firms and household surveys to quantify the economic costs of infrastructure disruptions in low- and middle-income countries. It uses new infrastructure and hazard databases to estimate the average annual damages that natural shocks cause on infrastructure assets. It also assesses the benefits from building more resilient infrastructure systems, considering not only stronger assets, but also system-level solutions (from redundancy and decentralization to nature-based solutions) and opportunities to make users of infrastructure (households and supply chains) more resilient and better able to manage disruptions.
See the report, press release and other material to find more details about the analysis.