Person:
Jha, Abhas K.

Urban and Disaster Risk Management, East Asia and the Pacific, World Bank
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Urban Development, Disaster Risk Management
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Urban and Disaster Risk Management, East Asia and the Pacific, World Bank
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Last updated January 31, 2023
Biography
Abhas Jha is Practice Manager, Urban Development and Disaster Risk Management (East Asia and the Pacific) within the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice for the World Bank. He leads operations and strategy, technical quality control and risk management of one of the largest portfolios of infrastructure lending, technical assistance, and advisory services within the World Bank. Abhas works on cities, infrastructure finance and economics, risk and resilience, and public policy. He has been with the World Bank since 2001, working on policy reform and development finance in a variety of countries including China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Jamaica, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Peru. Abhas earlier served as Adviser to the World Bank Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Sri Lanka. He was for 12 years a member of the Indian Administrative Service (the national senior civil service of India) in the Government of India (in the Federal Ministry of Finance and earlier in the state of Bihar). Abhas is the lead author of "Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Disasters" (2010) and "Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management" (2012) and has edited/co-edited or contributed chapters to several other publications.

Publication Search Results

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    Publication
    Building Urban Resilience : Principles, Tools, and Practice
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-03-08) Jha, Abhas K. ; Miner, Todd W. ; Stanton-Geddes, Zuzana
    Building Urban Resilience in East Asia is a World Bank program that aims to increase the resilience of cities to disasters and the impacts of climate change by using a risk-based approach to making public investment decisions. The objective is to demonstrate a scalable methodology and practical tools for risk assessment that can be used for city-level investment decisions. Working closely with the stakeholders involved in land use planning and infrastructure development, phase one of this program identified the major challenges facing urban decision makers in terms of risks from natural disasters and climate change and now offers open-source risk assessment tools that can be used by city-level institutions, other communities, private investors, and planners of infrastructure services. Phase two explores different investment options, management plans, and capacity building needs. The goal is to formulate a strategy in which flexible and 'low-regret' measures can be cost-effective even when risks are uncertain. Taking into account future risks and uncertainties, resilience relies on redundancy. Cities facing difficult decisions about scarce resources and investments strive for efficiency. Financial approaches to urban disaster resilience should reduce the negative impacts of disasters on individuals and communities, the private sector, and public entities.