Regional: Enhancing Disaster Risk Understanding and Resilience

Multisector / ADB's corporate management, policy and strategy development

Disasters pose a substantial threat to sustainable socioeconomic development in Asia and the Pacific. Countries in fragile and conflict-affected situations and small island developing states are particularly vulnerable to social impacts and economic shocks that result from disasters, while the vulnerable groups--especially of women, poor, people with disabilities--bearing the disproportionate impacts. The importance and benefits of disaster-resilient planning and infrastructure investment to better manage geophysical and climate-related risks has been increasingly recognized, with such investment a regional imperative that can generate strong returns.

Seismic events comprised four of the five most severe disasters in terms of human impact worldwide over the 2001-2020 period. As such, there is a need to strengthen geophysical risk assessment in ADB DMCs and ensure that infrastructure guidance and standards adequately address geophysical risk management. Comprehensive geophysical risk assessment and the integration of appropriate risk reduction measures in infrastructure pipelines and projects are critical to minimize the human and economic impact of such events. At present, the quality of project-level geophysical risk assessment in DMCs varies across sectors and investments, with many government and ADB-supported projects relying on a limited geophysical risk information, such as national and provincial maps or interpretations of a project's initial environmental examination or impact assessment. Strengthening project and portfolio geophysical risk assessment requires addressing barriers related to DMC knowledge, technical capacity, guidance, and resources for designing and implementing resilient investment projects, availability of granular and sector-specific hazard data and mapping to inform decision-making, and integration of disaster risk reduction in governance and upstream planning. There is a need to develop guidance for ADB, DMCs, and other regional stakeholders on good practice approaches and standards for systematic geophysical risk assessment as part of broader multihazard risk assessment processes.

ADB's 2021 Disaster and Emergency Assistance Policy emphasizes that risk management begins with risk reduction; and acknowledges that DMCs have differentiated risk profiles and, thus, opportunities for enhanced resilience. The TA will directly support improved differentiated risk information and disaster risk reduction by (i) developing best practice technical guidance and innovative knowledge solutions for geophysical hazard assessment and management, (ii) assessing the current landscape of geophysical hazard resistant codes and standards in priority Group A DMCs, and (iii) developing action plans and convening regional dialogue to enhance country systems and standards for resilient infrastructure and urban development.

Knowledge on disaster risk assessment enhanced

National resilience standards strengthened