Building on the OECD Prevent-React-Rebuild framework, this chapter argues that post-disaster reconstruction of competitiveness-related infrastructure must be forward looking, risk informed and aligned with long-term development objectives. In line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, this chapter discusses why Building Back Better (BBB) matters for developing countries and clarifies that, to operationalise BBB, targeted financing and governance mechanisms must be put in place to ensure rebuilding is people-centred.
Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026
Rebuilding for the Future
Abstract
The Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure (hereafter “the Compendium”), introduced in 2024, is a technical report that presents concrete infrastructure projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the OECD, with a view to identifying global good practices. It is grounded on the principles that each context is unique and that knowledge-sharing and peer-learning enhance the quality and impact of public policy processes. It aims at identifying key challenges and needs of developing countries with a view to enhancing their capabilities and policies as well as to foster effective international partnerships for sustainable development.
The Compendium focuses on competitiveness-related infrastructure, defined as “assets, facilities and systems that have a direct effect on the economic performance and competitive capabilities of a given location. It includes transportation networks (roads, ports, airports, railways), energy facilities (power plants, grids), telecommunication networks and data centres” (OECD, 2024[1]). This is because competitiveness-related infrastructure plays a key role in enabling growth and sustainable development, having an economy-wide impact that extends well beyond the assets themselves. Competitiveness-related infrastructure assets are capital-intensive, long-lived and shape development trajectories for decades. It is essential that they are planned in a forward-looking way.
For developing countries, prioritising resilience is even more urgent, considering the persistent, if not growing, gaps that hamper sustainable development prospects. Reconstructing them to past standards risks entrenching structural bottlenecks, technological obsolescence and exposure to future shocks, with lasting consequences for economic performance (OECD, 2024[1]; OECD, 2024[2]; ITF, 2024[3]). By contrast, integrating resilience, quality and future-oriented standards into the rebuilding of competitiveness-related infrastructure supports both disaster risk reduction (DRR) and long-term economic transformation. Embracing resilience is not a luxury choice for developing countries: it should guide investments to close infrastructure gaps without locking into fragile, inefficient systems that would constrain industrialisation, trade integration and growth in an increasingly risk-prone environment.
This edition of the Compendium builds on the Prevent-React-Rebuild (PRR) framework, presented in the 2024 edition (OECD, 2024[1]), and focuses on analysing global good practices on Building Back Better (BBB). This chapter clarifies why BBB matters for sustainable development and why this concept is particularly important in the context of developing countries. Based on the in-depth review of 7 case studies (presented in Chapter 3) and discussed through an Expert Advisory Group (EAG), it argues that any rebuilding effort needs to be planned, financed and implemented in a way that increases resilience and preparedness to future shocks, while at the same time it should enable advancing on achieving local development aspirations.
This introductory chapter is structured in 3 sections. The first clarifies the rationale for making rebuilding forward looking. The second section gives an overview of international reference frameworks for BBB and the third section presents three keys for future-proofing rebuilding: people, finance and governance.
This chapter is followed by Chapter 2 that presents 5 global good practices for BBB, based on the review of the 7 case studies. Chapter 3 discusses in detail the 7 rebuilding processes from Honduras, Indonesia, Japan, Malawi, Nepal, Peru and Samoa, which have been chosen for this edition of the Compendium.
As the intensity and frequency of natural hazards increase, ensuring infrastructure resilience is crucial to achieve sustainable development and to avoid holding back developing countries in their development pathways (OECD, 2024[2]; OECD, 2024[1]).
The PRR framework guides governments in planning adequate actions to ensure infrastructure resilience to natural hazards (Figure 1.1). Each phase is distinct and interconnected, requiring targeted legal frameworks, technical capacities and financing tools. Actions taken during a phase should compound and contribute to achieving effectiveness in the other ones. Preventive actions should be implemented along the infrastructure asset life cycle and should be seen as productivity-enhancing investments to reduce costs and minimise future risks. Any rebuilding efforts should aim at increasing preparedness for future disasters (OECD, 2024[1])
In the aftermath of natural disasters, governments need to trigger actions both in reaction and in rebuilding. The reaction phase encompasses the emergency response, including mitigating impacts, restoring operational capacity and limiting service disruption during the emergency (e.g. immediate repairs). It focuses on people’s safety first and then on restoring services when possible, or, if needed, on providing alternative temporary modes of service (e.g. replacement transport and electricity services while restoration is in process). This phase is often undertaken by targeted agencies and experts in co-ordination with local government and national authorities, and in the case of developing countries, it often involves a substantial mobilisation of foreign assistance and expertise.
In parallel to this phase, governments need to engage in the rebuilding phase. This involves the planning of how to rebuild the damaged infrastructure. This should be done in a forward-looking way to increase resilience to future hazards, augment preparedness capacity and support the overcoming of previous gaps in a way that is conducive to sustainable development. Implementation of the rebuilding phase is often delayed due to safety constraints, such as when affected areas have not been declared safe to access, debris needs to be removed, or risks from secondary disasters and expected natural hazards persist. Financial, technical and regulatory capacity gaps also tend to delay the implementation of the rebuilding phase.
Source: OECD (2024[1]).
Rebuilding needs to be forward looking:
It needs to increase resilience, enhance preparedness to anticipated future shocks, and enable communities to reach their development aspirations.
It requires systemic planning that goes beyond reparation and restoration and that enables a transformation of previous economic configurations (including spatial patterns where necessary), to achieve sustainable development. Such planning requires alignment with multi-level government strategies, substantively integrated with risk-informed and community-based assessments. This alignment and integration are essential to avoid the isolated rebuilding of individual assets, ensuring a life-cycle approach (Dehghani and Breteau, 2025[4]). This is particularly relevant for developing countries, which often lack adequate competitiveness-related infrastructure, and for which the costs of rebuilding what existed in the past would be even higher than for advanced economies in terms of missed development opportunities, inclusiveness, safety and resilience to future shocks.
It requires placing equity and inclusion considerations at the core of infrastructure rebuilding. Equity and inclusion need to be a pre-condition for rebuilding investments, not an after-thought. The rebuilding effort should explicitly aim at reducing inequalities and addressing the needs of the most vulnerable groups. This is in line with the G20 Principles for Quality Infrastructure Investment, issued in 2019 in Osaka, which states that infrastructure should be inclusive enabling the economic participation and social inclusion of all, and with the G20 Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Ministerial Declaration, issued in Belém in 2025, which stresses the importance of reconstruction efforts that leave no one behind (G20 Osaka Meeting, 2019[5]; G20 Brazil, 2025[6]).
Future-proofing rebuilding might require updates to the physical characteristics of infrastructure, its operational protocols, maintenance regimes and its location. It could also need the deployment of advanced or more efficient technologies and nature-based solutions, and it might entail changes to infrastructure design. These innovations require updates to legal frameworks and the establishment of adequate institutional mechanisms to ensure that planning is conducted in an inclusive and sustainable manner.
Rebuilding is challenging not only in reaching a shared agreement on “what” and “how” to rebuild but also in mobilising adequate resources and attracting private sector financing in situations of high uncertainty and operational risk. These challenges are particularly exacerbated in the context of developing countries, which in turn are also among the most exposed and vulnerable to natural hazards and tend to have limited fiscal and financial capacities as well as constrained government capabilities. Data, technology and collaboration, as presented in the PRR framework (OECD, 2024[1]), are key drivers of rebuilding. In particular, to BBB:
Data are crucial, especially for preparedness through early warning systems, as well as post-disaster response and rebuilding planning. Geospatial and meteorological data enable BBB through hazard maps, evidence-based, community-informed risk assessments and data-driven simulations for rebuilding plans. One example is the Global Infrastructure Risk Model and Resilience Index (GIRI), launched in 2023 and developed by the CIMA Research Foundation in Italy, INGENIAR Risk Intelligence in Colombia, UNEP-GRID Geneva and the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute and managed by CDRI and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is a global disaster risk assessment tool for infrastructure assets across countries, sectors and types of disaster, including metrics derived from probabilistic models, such as the value of infrastructure exposed to hazards and the estimated average annual losses from disasters (CDRI, 2025[7]). The Samoa case study, described in detail in Chapter 3, further demonstrates the utility of vulnerability assessments in embedding resilience into post-disaster rebuilding planning. This evidence-based method systematically integrates climate-related variables into road infrastructure planning through climate sensitivity analysis that accounts for real-time road conditions, historical data (hydrology information, sea-level trends, etc.) and identifies future vulnerabilities, thereby providing a robust empirical foundation for informed infrastructure decision-making.
Technology is key to upgrading planning and technical solutions for competitiveness-related infrastructure. As technology advances, solutions not available in the past become viable to increase infrastructure resilience and to make infrastructure aligned with future economic development needs. For example, in Japan, the Fukushima Institute for Research, Education and Innovation, created in 2023 as part of the 2011 earthquake post-disaster reconstruction act, has developed robots and drones to track disaster- and accident-affected communities, informing recovery strategies and rebuilding plans (F-Rei, 2024[8]). While commercial research on resilient infrastructure technologies is a limited field, it is a growing one. Cumulative patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) for climate adaptation technologies in infrastructure (including, for example, adaptation at coastal zones and river basins, adapting or protecting infrastructure through thermal insulation and extreme weather resilient electric power supply systems) accounted for 0.73% of all applications during 2018-2022, up from 0.66% in 2003-2007, with their total number increasing more than sixfold1 [authors’ elaboration based on OECD (2025[9])].
Collaboration lies at the cornerstone of BBB. As discussed in Chapter 3, in Nepal, for example, the 2015 earthquake recovery plan engaged over 250 national and international experts – spanning government, academia, civil society and the private sector – to plan actions in 23 economic and social sectors (Government of Nepal, 2015[10]). Regional collaboration is also pivotal for co-ordinated action, including data and good practices sharing. An example is the establishment of the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia in 2009. Created as a response to the 2004 Indian Tsunami, the initiative builds the capacities of member countries across Africa, Asia and the Pacific to generate and apply early warning information, improving data sharing, enhancing risk communication and supporting disaster-related research (RIMES, 2025[11]).
Ensuring that rebuilding is forward looking and increases preparedness to future shocks is an economic development imperative. Estimates indicate that economic damage from natural disasters is growing. Natural disasters caused, on average, 32% more economic damage during 2015-2024 than the previous decade, 2005-2014, according to the EM-DAT database (2025[12]).
Developing countries are among the most vulnerable, due to their geographical risk exposure, the greater vulnerability of their infrastructure, as well as constraints in skills and fiscal resources. About 40% of disasters between 2015-2024 happened in Asia, followed by Africa (19%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (17%) (Figure 1.2 Panel A). In addition, the relative economic burden of disasters is often greater in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), where disaster-related losses amounted to approximately 6% and 2% of GDP, respectively, compared with 0.3% in OECD countries from 2015 to 2024 (Figure 1.2 Panel B).
While BBB raises upfront rebuilding costs, it is necessary to break the cycle of poor development and limited resilience to future shocks. When countries do not assess rebuilding costs over the lifecycle, or integrate future disaster losses into infrastructure planning, they risk opting for solutions with lower initial costs over resilient alternatives, therefore increasing long-term costs (OECD, 2024[1]).
Future-proof infrastructure requires higher upfront investment but delivers significantly greater value over its lifecycle through avoided losses, reduced maintenance and continuity of economic activity (Box 1.1). Rebuilding that integrates resilience and that delivers on local development aspirations is crucial for sustainable development. Failure to BBB can result in inefficiencies in public spending. Poor rebuilding choices can also entrench inequality, undermine social cohesion and weaken trust in public institutions, thus further eroding development potential.
It is therefore pivotal to identify mechanisms to secure funding for BBB and to invest in planning tools that guarantee its efficiency, effectiveness and impact. A targeted approach is crucial to ensure that BBB is not dismissed as a costly and complex option in developing countries but rather seen as a necessary investment for sustainable development. In this context, international development finance institutions and multilateral and national development banks emerge as key players, as they bring the long-term, affordable financing needed to BBB and enable forward-looking planning that links rebuilding efforts to policies and investments for sustainable development. These institutions are particularly important given the limited integration of resilience considerations in national public funding mechanisms. In the transport sector, for example, 88% of 33 national public funding mechanisms, tracked by the World Bank in 2025 (Fanias, Xiong and Gall, 2025[13]), do not explicitly support resilience projects.
Note: Geographical and income classifications follow the United Nations classification system (2025[14]).
Source: Authors' elaboration based on EM-DAT (2025[12]) for disaster data and the World Bank (2025[15]) for GDP.
The World Bank (Hallegatte, Rentschler and Rozenberg, 2019[16]) undertook a pioneer study in 2019 to assess the cost of infrastructure disruptions and the economic benefits of resilient infrastructure in the power, water and sanitation, transport and telecommunication sectors. The study finds that resilient infrastructure investments are associated with extra costs, which are outweighed by long-term disaster losses mitigation (Table 1.1).
In the energy sector, for example, incorporating more resilient design and materials against earthquakes (such as adequate anchorage, proper design and bracing) to solar energy facilities can reduce disaster damage probability by up to 88% while increasing investment costs by 15%, on average.
In the transport sector, adapting railways to floods – through measures such as retaining walls, slope stabilisation and soil nailing – can increase investment costs by up to 50% while reducing damage probability by roughly 66%.
In capital-intensive infrastructure sectors, higher construction costs are not uncommon, being often compensated by higher return on investment. This is the case of the rail sector, in which high volumes of freight or passenger transport could generate sufficient returns to support higher investment in quality infrastructure.
Average incremental cost to increase resilience by infrastructure type, disaster it adapts to and expected damage reduction
Note: Estimates are made considering the implementation of new engineering and quality improvements to withstand earthquakes, storms and floods. The average incremental costs are obtained directly from the source. The damage probability reduction is obtained by calculating this rate based on the baseline probability versus the improved probability, obtained from the source.
Source: (Hallegatte, Rentschler and Rozenberg, 2019[17]).
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on Hallegatte, Rentschler and Rozemberg (2019[16]).
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) 2015-2030 places Build Back Better (BBB) as a core principle of post-disaster recovery (Box 1.2). Paragraph 33 of the Sendai Framework calls on States to “promote the incorporation of DRR measures into post-disaster recovery and reconstruction”, explicitly endorsing BBB to reduce future disaster losses (United Nations, 2015[17]). The Sendai Framework places rebuilding beyond physical infrastructure engineering upgrades, and discusses reforms needed in terms of development policy, regulatory issues and financial tools. The Sendai recognises that post-disaster phases are critical moments to reduce future losses and overcome past vulnerabilities. Global climate frameworks and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are also in line with BBB.
The Sendai Framework 2015-2030, adopted at the 3rd United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in 2015 in Sendai, Japan, is complemented by the 2019 G20 Principles for Quality Infrastructure Investment and replaces the 2005 Hyogo Framework for Action (2005-2015).
The Sendai Framework outlines four priorities for action:
1. understanding disaster risk;
2. strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk;
3. investing in DRR for resilience; and
4. enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to BBB in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
The Sendai Framework acknowledges the importance of combining physical reconstruction with policy, regulation and public awareness (and training) to make prevention, reaction and rebuilding indispensable elements to rebuild for sustainable futures.
Since its adoption, the Sendai Framework has also played a seminal role in shaping policy recommendations in several international organisations, including the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank.
Source: United Nations (2005[18]), Noy, Ferrarine and Park (2019[19]), Asian Development Bank (2024[20]), Hallegate, Rentscher and Walsh (2018[21]).
Over the past decade, the concept of BBB has evolved from a normative aspiration into a set of broadly agreed-upon principles embedded in global frameworks. BBB is defined as the integration of resilience, risk reduction, sustainability and improved performance into the recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction of physical, social, institutional and economic systems after a disaster (UNDRR, 2024[22]).
Rather than restoring assets and services to their pre-disaster condition, the BBB approach calls for correcting pre-existing vulnerabilities by upgrading design standards, strengthening institutions and improving land use, governance and service delivery. For competitiveness-related infrastructure, this implies shifting from asset replacement to life-cycle-based investments that enhance safety, reliability, inclusiveness, adaptability to anticipated future shocks and responsiveness to development aspirations, such as, for example, social inclusion, industrialisation, innovation and increased local value addition.
BBB is not an optional characteristic of rebuilding, but a necessary condition for sustainable development. At the operational level, progress has been made through tools and programmes that enable the integration of BBB principles in rebuilding, for example, through the Post-disaster Needs Assessments (PDNAs) and the Disaster Recovery Framework (DRF) (Box 1.3). These tools support planning investments in infrastructure, treating them not as isolated facilities, but as part of a complex economic and social system that can be rebuilt to achieve an improved development path with higher productivity and lower economic and social vulnerabilities.
Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA)
A PDNA is a globally recognised government-led methodology designed to evaluate post-disaster physical damages, economic losses and recovery needs. The standardised methodology was established through the 2008 Joint Declaration on Post-Crisis Assessments and Recovery Planning, jointly with the European Union (EU), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank (UNDP, WB and EU, 2013[23]).
The primary purpose of a PDNA is to inform the formulation of comprehensive recovery strategies by the impacted countries and facilitate the mobilisation of financial and technical resources. The implementation of standardised PDNAs has allowed for the streamlining of the evaluation process and has become a useful tool for consolidating donor support.
PDNAs assess damages by sectors, including social ones (housing and settlements, education, health, culture and nutrition), productive sectors (agriculture, livestock, fisheries and forestry; industry, commerce and trade; tourism), infrastructure [water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)]; community infrastructure; energy and electricity; transport and telecommunications and cross-cutting themes (employment and livelihoods; disaster risk reduction; governance; environment; gender, etc.)
In 2013, PDNA guidelines by sectors were published, including a specialised one on infrastructure (Quick and Demetriou, 2017[24]). The PDNA framework for infrastructure sector involves: 1) assessing physical and systematic damages on physical assets, supply chains and public services and identifying potential threats that may deteriorate conditions or trigger another disaster; 2) estimating the monetary value of damages, such as repair and reconstruction costs; 3) analysing the implications of government expenditure increase on rebuilding efforts; 4) co-ordinating cross-sectoral partners; and based on these findings, 5) developing an infrastructure recovery strategy. Crucially, it explicitly calls for a reassessment of reconstruction needs once governments have decided on what measures are needed to improve future infrastructure.
Disaster Recovery Framework (DRF)
A DRF is a government-led tool to conceive and plan the policy, institutional, financial and operational aspects of disaster recovery programmes, and outline outcomes to be achieved (GFDRR et al., 2017[25]). This idea was advanced globally by the WB’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), which, in collaboration with partners, published the first DRF Guide in 2015 (revised in March 2020). This guideline provided a practice-based, results-focused methodology for governments and partners to plan, prioritise, finance and implement BBB programmes in the aftermath of large-scale disasters. The DRF is ideally finished within a maximum of 45 days after the disaster occurs (GFDRR et al., 2015[26]; GFDRR et al., 2020[27]).
Source: Authors’ elaboration based on UNDP, UE and WB (2013[23]), G20 Osaka Meeting (2019[5]), GFDRR, UN, EU and World Bank (2020[27]).
Translating BBB from principle to practice requires elevating infrastructure planning to the core of economic development planning.
While in the aftermath of a disaster that has damaged competitiveness-related infrastructure, the tendency is to prioritise fast reaction, people’s safety and services restoration, the PRR (Prevent-React-Rebuild) framework guides governments to address rebuilding in a forward-looking way to ensure investments are planned in such a way as to minimise long-term costs and maximise sustainable development outcomes.
The case studies in this Compendium show how, in each context, specific mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that rebuilding is done in a forward-looking way. While each case exhibits different characteristics regarding the natural hazards faced, damage profiles, severity of human toll and affected infrastructure, three common factors emerge from all cases as critical in ensuring an effective rebuilding:
People. Any rebuilding effort needs to put people at the centre of any decision. Managing the human factor is essential even when the planning exercise is about reconstructing a competitiveness-related infrastructure.
Any rebuilding effort should be conceived as a development programme in a systemic and participatory way, rather than as a repair and reconstruction of a physical asset. This “human and community” factor is not only pivotal in the reaction phase, but also essential in the rebuilding and recovery strategy. To ensure rebuilding is forward looking, the planning needs to start from the people and the community. The adoption of this principle as a priority for competitiveness-related infrastructure planning is still incipient, despite its common application in development policy.
To BBB, community engagement and participation in risk assessment and in needs-identification exercises are not collateral actions; they are core components of the planning exercise. It therefore requires planning social and economic development programmes as part of the physical assets rebuilding effort. It also encompasses the need to invest in capacity building to ensure resilience, by enabling community awareness and learning, and by activating training for infrastructure resilience design and project management. As discussed in Chapter 3, the experience of the rebuilding in Okuma town (Japan) and of five different bridge projects in Indonesia illustrate this point of ensuring that rebuilding is people-centred.
Finance. Rebuilding requires activating targeted financial resources that go beyond the reaction and restoration phase. BBB implies higher upfront costs than traditional rebuilding but delivers superior development outcomes by reducing exposure to expected future shocks, mitigating risks and enabling the activation of new growth sources. This includes access to predictable mid- and long-term recovery financing in addition to emergency and fast-tracked financial support. Creating mechanisms to align and generate synergies between emergency funds and longer-term development budgets is essential to enable BBB. Without appropriate financial structures, BBB objectives are easily sidelined. Adequate financing, together with planning and project management capacities, is needed to ensure that rebuilding is forward looking and delivers on sustainable development.
In this respect, more needs to be done to mobilise financing and technical support tools to ensure that BBB is implementable at the scale needed to achieve impact, especially in developing countries. Development assistance, given its nature, tends to prioritise funding for post-disaster reaction over long-term infrastructure investments. For example, from 2020 to 2023, Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows for short-term emergency measures (i.e. post-disaster emergency response, reconstruction relief and rehabilitation and disaster prevention and preparedness) were 70% larger than those for investments in energy, communication and transport (OECD, 2025[28]). It is therefore essential to identify how to bridge the financing gap for BBB. Development finance institutions, including national development banks, emerge as key actors to turn BBB into a reality. They enable matching funds from the private sector to provide resources, tools and competencies, as well as access to technologies and data to plan interventions in a systemic way and can trigger additional investments in complementary areas in support of government development programmes. The rebuilding experiences of Honduras, Malawi and Samoa, discussed in Chapter 3, showcase the crucial role of international development finance institutions in enabling BBB.
Governance. Updates in governance, through targeted institutions, dedicated co-ordination mechanisms, or reforms to legal frameworks, are needed to rebuild in a forward-looking way. While the co-ordination of multiple actors, across levels of government and with the private sector, is a common feature of any infrastructure project, BBB often entails deeper governance reforms to enable synergies between the emergency response and the reaction phase with the rebuilding effort.
Institutional arrangements are needed to develop effective rebuilding plans and implement them in an efficient and transparent way. Mechanisms to update regulatory frameworks are essential to enable BBB, for example, through building codes and standards. Ensuring well-defined institutional mandates with clear legal responsibilities is essential to avoid fragmented efforts and to ensure transparency, accountability and stakeholders’ engagement. It is also important to have in place adequate institutional capacities and tools to foster public trust and investors’ confidence. Strengthening public sector capabilities at all government levels, supporting local government and building capacity, also through international partnerships, are critical components of ensuring effective governance for BBB.
The cases of Indonesia and Nepal discussed in Chapter 3 provide interesting examples of governance reforms for disaster risk management and rebuilding which entailed first the creation of a temporary agency for managing the rebuilding phase, and then the conversion of this temporary institutional arrangement into a permanent body as the Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Authority and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, with a view to increase preparedness to face the consequences of natural hazards (for details see Chapter 2).
Investing in competitiveness-related infrastructure is not just about building physical assets; it is about shaping future development opportunities. Rebuilding involves not only a technical planning exercise to repair or restore damaged assets, but also strategic development choices. Getting it right matters because investment needs are high and the potential future costs of failure are even higher.
Rebuilding efforts shape local and spatial development, institutional practices and social contracts for decades to come, thereby influencing long-term development patterns. Treating reconstruction as an opportunity to reduce risks and overcome structural weaknesses is essential for sustainable development in every country, and particularly in developing countries where development aspirations are high, vulnerabilities are growing, and infrastructure and socio-economic gaps remain deep. Chapter 2 presents five global good practices to make rebuilding forward-looking. Chapter 3 discusses in-depth seven rebuilding projects across the globe, identifying the lessons learned and opportunities for improvement.
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← 1. This includes the following categories from the OECD dataset on patent diffusion database (OECD, 2025[9]): adaptation at coastal zones or river basin; adapting or protecting infrastructure or their operation (including structural elements or technology for improving thermal insulation, in transportation, extreme weather resilient electric power supply systems, planning or developing urban green infrastructure, and relating to heating ventilation or air conditioning technologies); assessment of water resources; information and communication technologies [ICT] supporting adaptation to climate change, e.g. for weather forecasting or climate simulation; irrigation water conservation; protecting water resources; water collection (rain, surface and ground-water); water conservation in thermoelectric power production.