Publication: From A Rocky Road to Smooth Sailing: Building Transport Resilience to Natural Disasters
Date
2019-06
ISSN
Published
2019-06
Author(s)
Espinet Alegre, Xavier
Avner, Paolo
Fox, Charles
Koks, Elco
Tariverdi, Mersedeh
Abstract
Reliable transport infrastructure is one
of the backbones of a prosperous economy, providingaccess to
markets, jobs and social services. Sustainable Development
Goal 9 (SDG9) calls forincreased access to sustainable
transport infrastructure in low- and middle-income
countries.Collectively, these countries will need to spend
between 0.5 percent and 3.3 percent of their GDPannually
(157 billion to 1 trillion US Dollars) in new transport
infrastructure by 2030 – plus an additional 1 percent to 2
percent of GDP to maintain their network – depending on
their ambition and their efficiency in service delivery
(Rozenberg and Fay, 2019). Because of the wide spatial
distribution of transport infrastructure, many transport
assets are exposed and vulnerable to natural hazards,
increasing costs for national transport agencies and
operators. During the 2015 floods in Tbilisi, Georgia, the
repair of transport assets contributed approximately 60
percent of the total damage cost (GFDRR, 2015). In the 1995
earthquake in Kobe, Japan, accessibility as measured by the
length of open networks directly after the shock dropped by
86 percent for highways and by 71 percent for railways
(Kazama and Noda, 2012b). Such transport disruptions
necessarily have direct impacts on the local economy.
Employees face difficulties commuting, access to firms is
disrupted for clients, interruptions in the supply chain
inhibit production, and finished products cannot be easily
shipped (Kajitani and Tatano, 2014). The paper, prepared as
background material for the Lifelines report on
infrastructure resilience, summarizes the main findings on
the risk faced by transport networks and users as a result
of natural disasters and climate change, and the main
recommendations for building more resilient transport
networks. It starts by describing how transport disruptions
affect firms and households either directly and through
supply chains. It then proposes a range of approaches and
solutions for building more resilient transport networks,
showing that the additional cost of resilience is not high
if resources are well spent. Finally, it provides a set of
practical recommendations.
Citation
“Rozenberg, Julie; Espinet Alegre, Xavier; Avner, Paolo; Fox, Charles; Hallegatte, Stephane; Koks, Elco; Rentschler, Jun; Tariverdi, Mersedeh. 2019. From A Rocky Road to Smooth Sailing; From A Rocky Road to Smooth Sailing : Building Transport Resilience to Natural Disasters. Background paper for Lifelines;. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/31913 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”