This chapter presents five global good practices to ensure that rebuilding after natural disasters is implemented with the view to Build Back Better (BBB). Based on the preparatory work carried out for this edition of the Compendium and learning from the seven case studies presented in Chapter 3, it discusses how forward‑looking planning, embedding preparedness in rebuilding, activating target funding and partnerships, ensuring effective time management and making rebuilding people-centred are key to ensure that infrastructure rebuilding is not just an investment for reparation and restoration but a transformative one to deliver on sustainable development for the communities concerned.
Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026
Rebuilding for the Future
Abstract
Ensuring that rebuilding efforts are forward looking requires careful consideration of the specific context. This process depends on a range of factors, including socio‑economic factors, local economic development challenges and aspirations, geological characteristics and the origins of the disruption and the extent of the damage, whether infrastructure damage is systemic or isolated, and safety concerns linked to the post-disaster assessment.
While each rebuilding case is unique and each vision for the future calls for a transformation specific to the given place in question, a set of general principles nonetheless applies. When implemented effectively, these principles ensure that rebuilding is approached not merely as reconstruction, but as a transformative investment.
This chapter presents five guiding principles for Building Back Better (BBB) (Table 2.1). These principles are derived from the seven case studies discussed in detail in Chapter 3 and have been developed through an international peer dialogue process implemented in the framework of the preparatory work for this 2026 edition of the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure. These principles are not intended to be exhaustive; they have all equal importance and are interrelated.
Each section discusses the principle and concludes with a short box referring to how the principle has been implemented in given contexts, including in the seven case studies discussed in Chapter 3 (Table 2.2).
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Enabling forward-looking planning |
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Embedding preparedness in rebuilding |
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Activating targeted funding and partnerships |
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Ensuring effective time management |
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Making rebuilding people-centered |
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
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Countries |
Case studies |
Disasters |
Infrastructure |
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Honduras |
Embedding long‑term planning for resilient road connectivity in Honduras after repeated storms |
2020 Hurricanes Eta and Iota 2024 Storm Sara |
Road |
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Indonesia |
Rebuilding bridges in Indonesia |
2014 Mount Kelud Volcano eruption 2017 Cyclone Cempaka 2018 Earthquake and tsunami in Central Sulawesi Province 2021 and 2022 Flash floods in West Nusa Tengara |
Bridge |
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Japan |
Rebuilding in Okuma Town, Japan, after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake: a people‑centred and future‑oriented approach |
2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (Fukushima nuclear accident) |
Town-wide |
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Malawi |
Rebuilding road corridors and embedding resilience across their asset lifecycle in Malawi after Cyclone Freddy in 2023 |
2023 Cyclone Freddy |
Road |
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Nepal |
Adapting governance and tools for rebuilding in Nepal after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake |
2015 Gorkha earthquake |
Road |
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Peru |
Rebuilding river flood defences in Peru following the 2017 El Niño event |
2017 El Niño |
Water management |
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Samoa |
Rebuilding and climate‑proofing the road network following the Cyclone Evan in Samoa |
2012 Cyclone Evan |
Road |
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on the case studies presented in this chapter.
Build Back Better (BBB) requires transforming recovery actions from a temporary fix or restoration intervention into a structural upgrade to support long‑term sustainable development. A key principle is to enable forward‑looking planning. This requires moving beyond planning restoration and reparation interventions towards planning interventions for systemic transformation. Enabling forward-looking planning is a cornerstone of effective BBB approaches, as it shifts reconstruction from restoring what was lost to strategically investing in a more resilient, inclusive and productive future.
Rather than replicating pre‑disaster competitiveness-related infrastructure as it was, including in terms of its spatial patterns, forward‑looking planning uses the rebuilding phase to address long‑standing structural weaknesses, such as inadequate connectivity, service gaps and limited economic diversification or innovation. To do so, the rebuilding phase updates the damaged infrastructure in ways that address challenges and reflect the development aspirations of the affected community.
Enabling forward-looking planning requires activating institutional, financing and partnership mechanisms in addition to those tailored to recovery and reaction with a view to identifying which development gaps can be addressed through the rebuilding phase. In practice, this is achieved by:
Co-ordination across sectors, levels of government and stakeholders to enable integrated and long‑term measures. Forward‑looking planning aligns recovery investments with longer-term development, climate and social goals, ensuring coherence between immediate action and development ambitions. Public‑private collaboration, community engagement and transparent governance mechanisms help ensure that plans are realistic, implementable over time and that they address existing development challenges.
Placing equity and intergenerational considerations at the centre of rebuilding projects. Decisions taken today shape opportunities, risks and costs for future populations. BBB therefore requires assessing horizontal, vertical and intergenerational distributional impacts, protecting the most vulnerable and investing in capacity building and institutions that support achieving better futures for all. By linking resilience, sustainability and fairness, forward‑looking planning turns rebuilding into a catalyst for sustainable development.
Community participation. Forward‑looking planning needs to be grounded on data-driven risk assessments and to be community‑informed. A community‑informed approach can be enabled by engaging local communities and local stakeholders, but it can take time, especially in the aftermath of a natural disaster when the urgency of immediate needs must be balanced against longer‑term structural transformation. This engagement is a necessary step to ensure that rebuilding addresses structural imbalances and that it is not just a simple restoration and repair intervention.
This is particularly important in developing countries where local development needs are high and the reconstruction phase could be turned into a real driver for change. Community participation empowers residents and local stakeholders, who often must undergo temporary relocation, by integrating local visions, aspirations and knowledge in the planning of rebuilding, complementing traditional technical assessments. Local insights on geography, historical hazard impacts and social vulnerabilities, as well as foreseeing scenarios on desirable futures enable the creation of tailored, relevant rebuilding plans that address the unique needs and ambitions of a given locality (OECD/UN-Habitat, 2026[1]). A community‑informed approach also ensures that marginalised groups are included in the recovery, addressing disparities and preventing the reinforcement of existing social and economic vulnerabilities.
Balancing predictability with flexibility. Forward-looking planning also requires balancing long‑term views with adaptive planning mechanisms that integrate foresight and scenarios to factor in the flexibility needed for tomorrow (Box 2.1). Forward‑looking planning requires stress‑testing infrastructure, services and institutions against multiple future pathways, not only the most probable ones. Planning must be evidence-based, incorporate lessons learned, aligned with clear objectives and designed to remain adaptable as conditions evolve. This exercise of balancing predictability, which is necessary for long-term investments, with flexibility, enables policymakers and the private sector to prioritise options that deliver benefits today while preserving flexibility for tomorrow. Institutional capacities to update plans and adapt are as important as the plans themselves, and this adaptability needs to be integrated into the project planning life cycle.
Malawi used forward-looking planning with a long-term time horizon to ensure that major transport projects – including both rebuilt infrastructure and new projects – integrate resilience and are aligned with national development goals. This planning exercise resulted in the National Transport Master Plan (2017‑2037), developed in 2015 with support from the World Bank. It presents a 20‑year portfolio of investment projects summing up USD 9 billion, which mandates Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (CRVAs) for all major transport projects, the revision of design standards and the mainstreaming of climate risk into district planning. It relied on extensive stakeholder feedback from public and private sectors, civil society and international partners to develop future scenarios and concrete proposals for meeting increasing transport needs in a safer, lower‑cost way and with resilience already embedded from the get-go. It is aligned with Malawi 2063, a national development blueprint articulating the vision of transforming the country into an inclusively wealthy, self‑reliant, industrialised upper-middle-income nation by 2063, in which infrastructure, such as energy and transport, is listed as a key enabler.
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on “Building Back Better: A case from Malawi”, presentation by the Ministry of Transport & Public Works at the Second Preparatory Meeting of the Compendium of Good Practices in Quality Infrastructure in November 2025.
Building Back Better (BBB) not only requires turning the recovery phase into a development driver by forward‑looking planning but also requires that infrastructure rebuilding enhances preparedness and resilience to future natural hazards.
This means that rebuilding projects need to anticipate future risks, climate, demographic, technological, economic and social ones, and to integrate them into long‑term investment and policy choices (Box 2.2). This requires:
Integrating multi-hazard and data-driven risk assessments as part of the rebuilding process. Data‑based and community‑informed risk assessments are crucial for guiding decision‑makers on how to improve future physical infrastructure design and implementation (e.g. through new materials, standards, increasing redundancies and adoption of nature-based or hybrid solutions, among others), on how to amend the way infrastructure is maintained, or even whether it would be more advisable to relocate assets to safer areas. In the road sector, for example, these assessments generally involve hazard exposure mapping, asset-level vulnerability assessments and system-level criticality and network effects analysis (Xiong et al., 2025[2]).
Risk assessments should also be used to help prioritise actions and sequence decisions on rebuilding over time, contributing to cost effectiveness and effective time management of rebuilding interventions. Data-driven risk assessments can have multiple benefits that go beyond just managing physical assets or disaster risk. This information can guide urban planning and prioritise social and economic investments ensuring that the rebuilt competitiveness‑related infrastructure contributes to sustainable development and resilience. Useful data involve enabling updated climate projections, using geospatial data and vulnerability mapping enabled by AI‑driven satellite imagery to inform infrastructure design standards and site selection. Digital twin simulations of future climate scenarios can also help to inform decisions on possible infrastructure locations.
Supporting the updates of relevant standards and guidelines. Data‑driven risk assessments should also be used to update construction design, performance and safety standards. A risk assessment could find that the parameters in building codes for seismic resistance, flood levels or temperature thresholds would need to change following lessons learned from a disaster, or land rezoning might be required. Through these assessments, lessons learned from previous disasters can also be codified and used to improve future preparedness. Estimates show that every USD 1 spent on improving building codes reduces disaster losses by USD 11 (World Bank, 2024[3]). For example, Japan introduced the world's first national seismic design code in 1924, establishing foundational principles for earthquake‑resistant construction in Japan after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake (Mw 7.9) that devastated Tokyo. Subsequent major earthquakes triggered progressive code enhancements, including a major one in 1981. As a result of these accumulated efforts, during the Great East Japan Earthquake (Mw 9.0) on 11 March 2011, modern code‑compliant buildings sustained almost no damage to main structures (World Bank, 2018[4]; Fire and Disaster Management Agency of Japan, 2013[5]). The updating of standards and guidelines has also been crucial in the rebuilding processes in Honduras and Nepal (Box 2.2).
Standards and guidelines can function as operational protocols that support practical implementation and dissemination of legal frameworks, clarifying procedures such as prioritisation, approval, contracting, monitoring and inspection of construction work. Where such guidelines do not already exist, they should be developed as early as possible after a disaster to support co‑ordinated and transparent recovery efforts. Putting in place pre‑existing protocols and mechanisms that allow for review of relevant regulations after disasters and implementation of new ones is important. This means clearly pre‑defined roles among executive, legislative and regulatory bodies, as well as formal co‑ordination mechanisms among relevant agencies and stakeholders to carry out reviews.
Linking reconstruction budgets to national resilience strategies. Successful practices link reconstruction budgets to preparedness and resilience benchmarks, in line with updated building codes and guidelines or with overall national resilience strategies. This approach has been applied, for example, in post‑disaster transport and flood‑control projects where reconstruction funds are disbursed upon the condition of putting measures in place to ensure that preparedness is embedded not only in physical assets but also in operational protocols, such as anticipatory maintenance and early warning systems. Another way to link reconstruction to national resilience strategy is to strengthen institutional organisation and capacity for reconstruction and disaster risk management. In several cases, as in Indonesia and Nepal, temporary agencies have been transformed into permanent institutions, thus increasing preparedness to future shocks (Box 2.2).
Supporting the updates of relevant standards and guidelines in Nepal and Honduras
In Nepal, after the 2015 earthquake, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) led the effort to create rules and manuals to guide reconstruction, as this information did not exist before. This was done in co-operation with key partners, notably international organisations like the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), as well as various local NGOs and community groups. The reconstruction manuals and standards were also developed with a focus on several key types of construction, including:
Seismic‑resistant design: To compile specific building techniques and materials to absorb and dissipate earthquake energy. This included recommendations to use reinforced concrete, proper wall bracing and well‑designed foundations.
Material specifications: The manuals provided detailed instructions on the quality of materials to be used, such as the type of stone, mud and timber, to ensure they meet safety standards. This was especially critical for traditional stone and mud mortar houses, which are common in rural Nepal.
Retrofitting damaged structures: The guidelines also offered a pathway for homeowners to repair and strengthen partially damaged buildings instead of tearing them down, using specific techniques to make them more resilient.
Community-based approach: The manuals were designed to be didactic (and user‑friendly) enough to support rebuilding initiatives from local masons and community members, often with the support of engineers and technicians.
Honduras started, in 2024, an investment project to repair and rebuild the CA‑4 and CA‑13 highways that connect important production sites to the Puerto Cortés, Central America’s largest port, with the objective of undertaking, at the same time, long‑term resilience improvements and short‑term investment needs. To do so, Honduras has complemented conventional reconstruction efforts with:
Reforms to its national disaster management system (SINAGER), introducing the climate risk management dimensions into its transport policy and undertaking capacity building in the road sector to improve asset management and procurement processes towards better resilience management.
The adoption of new forms of contracts for road procurement, a performance-based contract that incentivises private contractors to maintain minimum road performance standards over longer periods of time and to incorporate climate resilience and disaster preparedness to road operations.
The integration of climate adaptation measures into project design standards, encouraging preparedness to respond to a range of future climate risks.
Linking reconstruction to national resilience strategies in Indonesia and Nepal
Indonesia’s exposure to frequent disasters has prompted the country to implement permanent governance structures for disaster risk management and rebuilding. This governance was inspired by temporary structures, created in the country to respond to specific disasters during the 2000s, as in the case of Banda Aceh and Nias after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. The Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency was created in 2005, under the national government administration, and operated for five years to plan and co-ordinate reconstruction investments and mobilise financial resources. The lessons drawn from this experience and the need for a more proactive post‑disaster action inspired the creation, in 2008, of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Authority (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana, BNPB), through Presidential Regulation No 8 to co‑ordinate the implementation of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies at the national level covering prevention, emergency response, rehabilitation and reconstruction after disasters.
When Nepal was hit by the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, there was no established national governance for disaster response. To implement a swift response, the country created the National Reconstruction Agency (NRA) in December 2015, designated to lead and manage the post‑earthquake recovery. The NRA established Nepal’s five‑year Post‑Disaster Recovery Framework, which detailed policy, institutional and implementation frameworks, and a rebuilding investment plan to respond to the earthquake. After learning from this disaster and with the experience gained from the 2015 response, the country decided to establish a permanent National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority in 2017, ensuring institutional continuity of the country’s disaster response governance and a continuous improvement of Nepal’s DRR capabilities.
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on “Good Practices on Private Housing Reconstruction in Nepal, after Gorkha Earthquake 2015”, presentation by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, Nepal at the 1st preparatory meeting for the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026 that took place in June 2025, and based on “Transforming Infrastructure Through Resilience, Inclusion and Sustainability in Honduras”, presentation by the National Secretariat of Infrastructure and Transport of Honduras at the 3rd preparatory meeting for the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026 that took place in November 2025.
Rebuilding for better futures requires activating targeted funding mechanisms that ensure the mobilisation of long‑term financing beyond recovery funds to rebuild competitiveness‑related infrastructure (in a forward‑looking and modernised way). In contrast, common tools for funding infrastructure recovery after natural disasters (e.g. catastrophe bonds or aid grants for recovery) often fall short of addressing the transformative ambitions of Building Back Better (BBB), as the focus tends to be on dealing with the emergency and restoring service provision.
Targeted funding for rebuilding could involve mechanisms at the international, regional or national level and for private‑public partnerships to mobilise funds in affected communities for long‑term transformation. For this purpose, co‑operation with the private sector, through funding and risk transfer instruments, can help leverage sufficient resources to meet investment needs. This should be in line with plans to increase preparedness or enhanced local economic development, including, for example, the use of improved construction materials or a relocation of the infrastructure to increase future preparedness and resilience.
While progress has been made in recent years in terms of creating innovative instruments for solidarity and shock absorption mechanisms, as for example the European Union Solidarity Fund introduced in 2022 to assist Member States in the event of catastrophes, these tools are not designed to drive systemic change and resilience as eligible expenditures are mostly linked to emergency responses and to what falls under the “reaction” pillar of the resilience cycle “Prevent‑React‑Rebuild”. Investments linked to redesigning infrastructure with higher climate resilience standards, to assets’ relocation and to transforming local economic development models fall out of what is eligible in most recovery funds and require targeted funding tools.
Development banks, national, regional and international ones, emerge therefore as critical actors to enable BBB by enabling long‑term affordable financing with conditionalities linked to transformative and resilience-enhancing outcomes.
Development banks and international partners foster BBB in multiple ways, and notably by enabling:
Funding linked to specific development impact outcomes, such as the use of improved design and materials, and implementing feasibility studies for asset modernisation or relocation, among others.
Funding for local economic development programmes to turn infrastructure rebuilding into a transformative investment, such as programmes for local value addition or innovation.
Technical assistance to plan, manage and build infrastructure in a forward-looking and resilient way, including by facilitating access to data and frontier technology for data-based risk assessment.
In developing countries, development banks and international partners also provide support in addition to financing, enabling a more holistic approach that is important for BBB through:
De-risking investment in countries hit by natural hazards by providing guarantees and crowding in private investment, as countries’ risk premiums and insurance costs tend to increase. For infrastructure rebuilding, project finance tools are often combined with risk sharing mechanisms to increase a project’s profitability and mitigate investors’ risk. This is particularly important as projects may not generate future revenues to cover investment costs. In this context, climate finance concessional programmes, insurance, guarantees and sovereign catastrophe risk pools can lower investors’ financial and climate risk perception by decreasing capital costs and providing protection against default and rapid liquidity to countries after disasters. Through sovereign catastrophe risk pools, for example, countries pay premiums to access a collective insurance scheme that allows them to receive resources when a disaster occurs (OECD, 2025[6]). A concrete example is the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (PCRAFI) Insurance Programme, implemented in 2007 with Samoa (Box 2.3).
Facilitating access to data. Funding from development banks and international partners often provides additional support, including expanding access to secure data, technical assistance for data analysis and interoperable data‑sharing systems, which are crucial for resilient infrastructure construction and management. In this way, support for long‑term transformation is amplified. For example, support can be crucial for access to a variety of data at spatial and temporal scales, including hazard, exposure, vulnerability, climate, environmental and socio-economic data, which are necessary for data-driven risk assessments. Access to these data can be limited, particularly for developing countries, where scarce resources prohibit investments in regular monitoring, or where access may be hampered by high prices. Partners can facilitate the use of collaborative platforms and standardised protocols to efficiently exchange data, reducing duplication and improving analytical quality. Open‑access datasets further expand availability. An example is the Transport Data Commons (TDC) initiative, a coalition of more than 30 organisations working on transport, including the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the Asian Development Bank and the OECD International Transport Forum. Launched in February 2026, it is a global, open platform for accessible and high‑quality transport data, such as indicators to support decarbonisation pathways in the sector (Transport Data Commons, 2025[7]).
Enabling effective digital infrastructure. Development banks can support bridging structural gaps in digital infrastructure, therefore enabling BBB. The use of advanced monitoring data also requires good digital infrastructure. For example, creating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data could require coverage with sensor networks, telemetry systems and mobile phone networks, among others. In the meantime, accessing datasets and processing them with advanced tools, including machine learning, also depends on fast internet and server capacity.
Updating policy frameworks to enable collaboration with qualified suppliers. Partners can provide crucial assistance in simplifying and modernising relevant frameworks to ensure talent is available to support rebuilding. Complex contracts or co‑operation agreements can prevent qualified suppliers and partners from participating, particularly when they operate cross‑border and lack familiarity with domestic legal frameworks. This is especially true for those that incorporate resilience technologies, if legal or procurement approaches do not mention resilience needs (Fanias, Xiong and Gall, 2025[8]). For example, engineers licensed in another country may find it difficult to practice legally in the disaster zone or to reach competitive prices for climate resilient solutions. In addition, overly complex terms may trigger long litigation processes and legal disputes, delaying efficient rebuilding. More flexible, simple and standard regimes can attract world‑class specialists and promote further collaboration between parties. During post-disaster reconstruction, special derogations can be introduced to ensure that investments are made on time and with the required quality. The experience of Peru, which updated its framework to ensure better collaboration with qualified suppliers through a Government‑to‑Government (G2G) partnership with the United Kingdom, is illustrative in this respect (Box 2.4).
Capacity building for engaging in new techniques and improving the interpretation of data. Training staff from relevant public and private sector bodies in analytical methods, modelling and GIS enhances their ability to apply risk assessments in rebuilding decisions. Simplifying the tools and ensuring interoperability across systems makes them more accessible and easier to integrate into existing processes. Development banks can engage in technical assistance and capacity-building programmes to ensure that risk assessment is used and translated into practical, actionable guidelines (Box 2.4). Partnerships between international organisations, national and local governments can also enhance targeted capacity-building programmes and effectively mobilise communities and the public sector at all levels of government. An example is the Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility (AFRI-RES), a partnership, launched in 2017, between the African Union, the African Development Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the World Bank, with the support of the Nordic Development Fund (NDF). It supports governments, planners and private project developers in Africa in integrating climate change into project planning and design and attracting financing (World Bank, 2025[9]).
PCRAFI is a risk-layering and financial resilience instrument, combining catastrophe risk modelling, data and sovereign disaster risk financing (including insurance and contingency finance). Its core contribution to BBB lies in shifting the focus from ad‑hoc recovery to anticipatory, rules‑based preparedness. By ensuring rapid liquidity after disasters, it enables governments to plan recovery and avoid delayed, sub‑optimal rebuilding driven by fiscal stress. Its key strengths are:
Speed and predictability of funding: Rapid payouts reduce pressure to rebuild quickly at lower standards.
Incentive effects: Risk assessment and pricing encourage better land‑use planning, risk reduction and resilient infrastructure.
Integration with policy planning: PCRAFI links financing with risk data and disaster risk management strategies, a core pillar of Building Back Better.
Avoidance of negative coping strategies: Governments are less likely to divert long‑term investment budgets or increase debt unsustainably aftershocks.
PCRAFI is a strong enabling mechanism for BBB, particularly on the financial resilience and institutional preparedness dimensions. Unlike purely ex post solidarity funds, it supports a forward‑looking recovery model by ensuring that financing constraints do not undermine resilient reconstruction. While BBB is not PCRFAI’s primary objective, the initiative creates the foundational conditions that make its pursuit feasible.
PCRAFI does not finance reconstruction directly and does not impose resilience conditionality on how payouts are used. On its own, it cannot guarantee that rebuilding will be greener, safer, or more inclusive. Those outcomes depend on national policies, standards and complementary investment instruments.
Source: The World Bank (2016[10]).
In Peru, after the 2017 El Niño disaster, a comprehensive reconstruction programme with a focus on building resilient infrastructure was established through a G2G partnership with the government of the United Kingdom (UK), administered by the National Infrastructure Authority (ANIN). One of the most impactful measures from this G2G agreement was the adoption of the New Engineering Contract (NEC) system, an alternative public procurement framework that permits contract customisation according to the specific requirements of a given infrastructure project or supplier.
This new institutional arrangement operates through two complementary mechanisms: first, technical knowledge transfer from UK entities to ANIN strengthens infrastructure design capabilities, enabling more precise contract specifications for resilient technology implementation; second, standardised bilingual contracts featuring simplified structures and accessible language in English and Spanish, combined with streamlined bidding procedures, expand the supplier pool and facilitate the selection of providers demonstrating superior resilience‑oriented solutions. Under this reformed framework, ANIN also enhanced contractual agility and flexibility, addressing longstanding challenges of incomplete infrastructure projects. Notably, the system replaces traditional litigation‑based dispute resolution with performance‑oriented mechanisms incorporating risk‑sharing arrangements between contracting parties.
This integrated approach exemplifies how legal and institutional frameworks can be structured, through capacity building and knowledge development, to simultaneously advance infrastructure resilience, procedural efficiency and market competition within disaster recovery contexts. Nevertheless, updated legal and institutional mechanisms can increase the demand for public human and financial resources. In the case of Peru, new obligations associated with the NEC contract were reported to increase project costs in a context of federal budget constraints.
In Samoa, the Enhanced Road Access Project (ERAP), approved in 2013 with support from the World Bank, provided USD 32 million for nine years to restore damaged roads and bridges while improving design standards and sector management practices. This project was complemented by the Samoa Climate Resilient Transport Project (SCRTP), a USD 38 million, six-year initiative approved in 2018. It provides financial support through a combination of debt and grants to rebuild critical infrastructure and enhance the long-term resilience of Samoa’s road sector through systematic improvements to transport infrastructure and institutional capacity. These projects were implemented by Samoa’s Land Transport Authority (LTA).
In addition to physical investment in infrastructure, a critical component of the World Bank support to Samoa consists of technical assistance provision for institutional and regulatory reforms to integrate climate change considerations into road sector planning, development and management. Under the ERAP, Samoa also received grants to strengthen LTA’s planning capacity, to revise maintenance and construction standards for roads and bridges and to update legal and regulatory frameworks. Under the SCRTP, project management and staff training programmes for the LTA were undertaken together with impact surveys to better assess the project’s social impacts and additional support to improve road safety standards. In addition, another World Bank programme, the Pacific Resilience Programme (PREP), launched in 2015, included specific interventions to strengthen early warning and emergency management.
Integrating technical assistance into infrastructure credit programmes served as bridge financing to enhance sustainable development impact and build local capacity for undertaking investment programmes. For example, the World Bank supported the updating of the Climate Resilient Road Strategy (CRRS) in 2012 and of the Climate Vulnerability Assessment (VA) in 2013. Both tools provided evidence‑based frameworks that systematically compiled climate variables to inform road sector planning and project prioritisation. As strategic planning instruments, they support hazard identification, the climate‑resilient design of infrastructure investments, prioritisation of investments and better assessing the benefits of the interventions to the country’s resilience in the road sector.
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on “ANIN Presentation”, presentation by the National Infrastructure Agency of Peru at the 2nd preparatory meeting for the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026 that took place in July 2025 and “Rehabilitation of the West Coast Road, Samoa Project”, presentation by the National Land Transport Authority of Samoa at the 3rd preparatory meeting for the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026 that took place in November 2025.
Effective time management in BBB is crucial, while rapid reaction is essential in the immediate aftermath of a disaster to save lives and restore basic services, rebuilding demands a different temporal logic.
Reacting requires different time management than rebuilding. Not differentiating the interventions risks hampering recovery and might contribute to perpetuating vulnerabilities, replicating pre-existing weaknesses and missing opportunities to improve resilience.
Managing time effectively, therefore, means sequencing actions appropriately, through pre‑defined post‑disaster protocols, to enable forward‑looking planning and embed resilience in rebuilding. Prioritising damage assessments, risk analysis and stakeholders’ consultations enables evidence‑based and community‑informed choices about when, what, where, how and whether to rebuild. Allocating time for building public understanding is equally important, as communities require time to reconcile their immediate needs with BBB.
The timeframes required to be factored in these steps in planning are not delays in responding to the disaster but are investments for better futures. They help ensure that reconstruction aligns with updated hazard information, climate projections and long‑term development objectives, rather than responding solely to political or social pressure for rapid visible results. In extreme cases, a long time span needs to be factored in for safety concerns, as in the case of rebuilding in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, followed by the Tsunami and the nuclear disaster (Box 2.5).
Effective time management therefore requires activating parallel measures to ensure, for example, that social and community concerns are considered when rebuilding can only take place after a long period of time. Emergency measures and reconstruction should be considered simultaneously under differentiated tracks. Temporary housing, for example, should be designed to meet the immediate needs of securing a place to live for those who lost housing, while reconstruction plans are developed with higher standards for long‑term housing.
Effective time management in reconstruction requires adaptive planning frameworks that allow timelines to be revised as circumstances change. This is often guided by multi‑year reconstruction plans, led by a dedicated agency and cross-ministerial government structures, including clear decision gates, procedures for continuous stakeholder consultation and mechanisms for transparent communication with affected communities about trade‑offs between speed, safety and long‑term resilience. The Fukushima experience underscores that incorporating time as a strategic variable, rather than a constraint, enables governments to balance urgency with quality, integrate preparedness into rebuilding and deliver infrastructure that supports sustainable recovery.
Effective time management is a critical but often underestimated dimension of post‑disaster reconstruction, as illustrated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. In this extreme case, the scale and complexity of the shock required authorities to move beyond rapid rebuilding and adopt a phased, long‑term reconstruction timeline aligned with safety, decontamination and social recovery objectives. Rather than prioritising speed alone, Japan sequenced actions – emergency response, temporary housing, environmental remediation, infrastructure rebuilding and economic revitalisation –according to evolving risk assessments and community readiness. This approach highlights that, in high‑risk contexts, “rebuilding at the right time” can be more effective than building quickly.
A key good practice emerging from Okuma Town is the alignment of physical reconstruction timelines with social and economic policies, particularly when long‑term displacement or relocation is unavoidable. Extended relocation periods were accompanied by targeted social protection measures, employment support, mental health services and investments in education and community facilities. Infrastructure rebuilding was synchronised with these policies to avoid creating assets disconnected from population needs or prematurely re‑occupying unsafe areas. This integrated approach helped mitigate social fragmentation and economic decline, demonstrating the importance of embedding social policy planning into reconstruction timelines from the outset.
Source: Okuma Town (2017[11]; 2023[12]).
Disasters affect not only physical infrastructure but, above all, people and social networks. Engaging communities in rebuilding is a cornerstone of Building Back Better (BBB).
Making rebuilding people‑centred places social issues at the core of economic planning through ensuring community engagement and fostering social cohesion. It helps affected people regain control, become active participants in their recovery and build resilience to future shocks. It means, in practice, having the affected community involved in reconstruction from the design and project formulation phase.
BBB needs to be based on a comprehensive understanding of local needs, capabilities and aspirations (Box 2.6). Road reconstruction, for instance, can gain from community inputs to identify critical access routes, minimise displacements and prioritise investments that improve local activities the most. It also requires factoring in social considerations in rebuilding, including enhancing local attractiveness to restore community confidence in returning to damaged areas. A pertinent example is the shifting aspirations of former Okuma Town residents in response to evolving circumstances following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake disaster. According to surveys conducted by the Reconstruction Agency, more than 67% of respondents were unwilling to return to the town in 2013 and merely 8.6% had expressed willingness to return, primarily due to radiation safety concerns and inadequate infrastructure reconstruction progress. By 2026, however, these figures shifted notably to approximately 55% and 19.1% (including those who had already returned), respectively (Reconstruction Agency of Japan, n.d.[13]). This trend illustrates how former residents’ decisions evolved as rebuilding progressed, underscoring the importance of allowing adequate time for both physical rebuilding and community confidence restoration.
BBB means planning competitiveness‑related infrastructure not only as physical assets, but also as a component of a local ecosystem that delivers sustainable development opportunities to people. It requires investing in people’s well‑being and social cohesion as part of territorial and local development planning. In Japan, enhancing social capital has proven effective in supporting post‑disaster population growth across all 47 prefectures between 1981 and 2012. This has been reflected in greater participation in voluntary organisations for disaster prevention and lower crime rates (Okuma Town, 2023[12]). In the case of the city of Kobe (Hyogo prefecture), community engagement has also played a role in creating local jobs in the service sector, more than compensating for job losses in industry, right after the 1994 Hanshin Awaji Earthquake (Shimada, 2017[14]). In this respect, investments to enhance local attractiveness are crucial; for instance, investing in education and health facilities can help promote an updated post‑disaster image and bring populations back into damaged areas, as seen in Japan (Box 2.6).
BBB requires systemic planning and synchronising infrastructure reconstruction with people‑centred policies and programmes, especially in contexts of prolonged displacement or relocation. Rebuilding prioritises local job creation and the use of local suppliers can accelerate economic recovery while strengthening the community ownership of the new infrastructure.
Indonesia has established a disaster governance framework to co‑ordinate short- and long‑term responses at the national and local levels with a focus on integrating people’s needs through community participation. The creation of the National Disaster Management Authority (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana, BNPB) in 2008 marked a shift from an ad-hoc disaster response to a permanent institutional capacity. In practice, the BNPB works together with local governments (provinces and regencies/cities) and regional disaster management agencies to ensure a co-ordinated multi‑level action when a disaster occurs. One of the guiding principles of this co-ordination response is community participation set by the BNPB regulation No. 6, issued in 2017. In practice, this regulatory enforcement formalises approaches Indonesia has already been using to engage with provinces, regencies, cities and the communities impacted by natural hazards. For example:
In 2016, during the reconstruction of the Sambong bridge in East Java Province, destroyed by the 2014 Mount Kelud Volcano Eruption, communities were actively involved in the project’s inception phase, being part of early risk and needs assessments undertaken by the Malang Regency Regional Disaster Management Agency (Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah, BPBD). This participatory assessment of potential risk and impact resulted in the inclusion of new design standards to secure population transport access needs and incorporated preventive measures, such as investments to increase resilience to potential future lava overflows.
In 2022, during the Tuva bridge reconstruction in the Central Sulawesi Province, as a response to the 2018 Earthquake and tsunami, the project design was informed by community consultations through a series of public meetings to prioritise and test the project concept. The bridge was rebuilt with more resistant materials, replacing the original wooden structure with steel and reinforced concrete and was relocated to a safer location.
In Japan, Okuma Town, following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, developed a strategic long‑term reconstruction plan, not only focusing primarily on physical infrastructure restoration, but also on investment in talent development facilities. The earthquake was a magnitude 9.1 event, the strongest ever recorded in Japan, triggering a catastrophic tsunami that precipitated a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, located in Okuma Town and Futaba Town, Fukushima Prefecture.
Recognising that human capital development is fundamental for sustainable post‑disaster recovery, Okuma Town’s reconstruction plan involved the launch of two symbolic talent development facilities, the Okuma Incubation Centre (OIC) in 2022 and the Manabiya Yumenomori school (nursery school through junior high school) in 2023, aiming to catalyse community revitalisation and local economy, and facilitate the displaced residents’ return through education and innovation.
This Okuma Town’s initiative exemplifies a people-centred approach to BBB wherein recovery is underpinned not merely by the restoration of built environments but by strategic investments in innovation capacity, educational opportunities and collaborative spaces for disaster-affected populations, while building a sense of community. Furthermore, both facilities function as a space for social integration and public engagement, while fostering knowledge creation and sharing, including for businesses through the OIC facilities.
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on “Rebuilding bridges bridging resilience: Funding collaboration for post-disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction of bridges in Indo”, presentation by the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) of Indonesia at the 3rd preparatory meeting for the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026 that took place in November 2025 and “Regional ‘Build Back Better’ through Education and Human Resource Development”, presentation by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), Japan at the 1st preparatory meeting for the Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026 that took place in June 2025.
Forward-looking rebuilding is a key pillar of ensuring infrastructure resilience to natural hazards. While rebuilding is inherently context- and time‑specific, a set of broadly applicable good principles applies and, when implemented, significantly impacts the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of rebuilding planning, financing and implementation.
This Compendium highlights the value of exchanging experiences to identify lessons learned and innovative approaches to Build Back Better (BBB). By sharing knowledge and identifying best practices tailored to local conditions, countries can effectively address their unique challenges while benefiting from proven strategies implemented elsewhere. This chapter has demonstrated that while each country faces distinct socio‑economic, environmental and institutional realities, some common principles and approaches can be universally applied to improve infrastructure resilience to natural hazards.
By fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and mutual learning, this chapter contributes to building a repository of effective strategies and tools. These can be adapted and implemented for different settings to enhance infrastructure resilience. In particular, five good practices have been identified:
Enabling forward-looking planning
Embedding preparedness in rebuilding
Activating targeted funding and partnerships
Ensuring effective time management
Making rebuilding people-centred
These good practices provide actionable guidance for forward-looking rebuilding after natural disasters. They enable countries not only to restore disrupted infrastructure and regain access to essential services, such as energy and transport, but also to transform disaster events into development opportunities. By creating mechanisms that support BBB, these practices help activate investments that drive forward‑looking change in affected communities, ultimately strengthening their long‑term resilience to anticipated future risks.
In addition, to improve national and local governance in developing countries, international partnerships are vital for supporting the implementation of these good practices. Developing countries often face significant challenges due to limited financial resources, technical expertise and institutional capacity. International partnerships can provide much-needed financial assistance, technical know‑how and capacity‑building support to help these countries overcome these barriers and effectively implement resilience‑building measures. Increased collective efforts by the global community, including national and international development banks and financial institutions, are needed to enhance developing countries’ resilience and promote sustainable development for the benefit of present and future generations worldwide.
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