Enhancing the resilience of infrastructure

Organized by:
Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS)
World Bank (WB)
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

 14:00-15:00 GMT-5
 1 November 2021
 Parallel session 2
 Virtual

This panel discussion featuring a diversity of speakers will focus on enhancing the resilience of infrastructure. Recent extreme events and the resulting disaster impacts around the world have highlighted the importance of sustainable, resilient infrastructure systems, especially in historically disadvantaged communities and hazard-prone areas. Public and private agencies have begun to develop sustainability plans that focus on protecting physical systems along with community capital and public health in the face of disasters and climate change. However, these emerging developments require long-term cooperative management, investment, and coordination across multiple agencies and sectors, while communities face limited budgets and reduced capacity to address looming environmental impacts.

This parallel session seeks to achieve the following goals:

• Provide ideas, recommendations, tools, practical examples and real references on how to enhance the resilience of infrastructure.
• Promote the incorporation of disaster risk assessments in the development and implementation of territorial policies for the design, contracting, construction and operation of resilient infrastructure, as well as the use of guidelines and monitoring tools based on expected demographic and environmental changes.
• Document the actions implemented in the countries of the region for the design, contracting, construction and operation of national resilient infrastructures with a priority focus on environmental sustainability.
• Identify best practices for public and private investments in building resilient infrastructure, including national health systems.

Panelists

Christopher Tufton
Minister of Health and Wellness, Jamaica

Favio López Chacón
Mayor of Cóbano, Costa Rica

Odalys de la Caridad Goicochea Cardoso
General Director for the Environment (CITMA), Government of Cuba

Alejandro Rossi,
Director, Multi-Country Office for Costa Rica, Panama and English/Dutch speaking Caribbean, United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS)

Liz Varga
Professor of Complex Systems, University College London (UCL) 

Dawn Skaggs
Emergency, Disaster and Climate Resilience Specialist, World Institute on Disability