Resilience Toolbox

OASIS Loss Modelling Framework  

OASIS Loss Modelling Framework (Catastrophe Modelling)

Catastrophe modelling (known as cat modelling) is the process of using computer-assisted calculations to estimate the losses that could be sustained due to catastrophic events such as a hurricane or earthquake.

OASIS is an improved risk assessment through more models, a different view of the risk, transparency, performance, and innovation. The Oasis Loss Modelling Framework provides an open source platform for developing, deploying and executing catastrophe models. It uses a full simulation engine and makes no restrictions on the modelling approach. Models are packaged in a standard format and the components can be from any source, such as model vendors, academic and research groups.

Developed by
Oasis

PCVA  

Participatory Capacity and Vulnerability Analysis

Oxfam’s participatory capacity and vulnerability analysis (PCVA) tool is a risk analysis process designed to help staff and partner organisations engage with communities in contexts where natural disasters are significant drivers of poverty and suffering. PCVA has its roots in two proven social development methodologies. First, it stems from capacity and vulnerability analysis (CVA) methodology. This has long enabled development and humanitarian aid workers to design programmes based on a community’s capacities as well as its vulnerabilities. It recognises that vulnerable people have capacities to cope with adversity and can take steps to improve their lives, however difficult their situation may be. Second, it is rooted in the belief that enabling communities to genuinely participate in programme design, planning, and management leads to increased ownership, accountability and impact, and is the best way to bring about change. PCVA draws on a wide range of participatory learning and action (PLA) techniques and tools that are designed to channel participants’ ideas and efforts into a structured process of analysis, learning, and action planning, with the overall aim of reducing a community’s disaster risk.

Developed by
Oxfam

NISMOD  

National Infrastructure Systems MODel

NISMOD is the UK’s first national infrastructure system-to-systems modelling platform and database. By 2020, the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC) national infrastructure portal will open to academia and industry as well as policymakers, providing access to infrastructure datasets, simulation and modelling results.

We investigate infrastructure and its interdependencies in energy, digital communications, solid waste, transport, waste water, water supply and infrastructure governance.

NISMOD-Int is a series of open-source analysis tools for the application of evidence-based decision making to developing counties. These tools will allow recipient countries to develop and assess alternative infrastructure transition strategies for meeting their future sustainable development goals.

Developed by
UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC) 

Resilience.io  

Resilience.io is designed as a computer-based platform that provides an integrated systems view of a city-region. It will be an analysis and decision-support tool for collaboration and resilience decision-making. The resilience.io platform combines computer representations of resource flows, human and business activities and infrastructure systems. The platform contains a growing library of process models of typical human, industrial and ecological systems, the relevant ones of which are used in a local instance to create a tailored integrated systems model for a city-region.

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Developed by
Ecological Sequestration Trust

CRAFT  

Climate Risk And Adaptation Framework And Taxonomy

CRAFT provides:

• a framework for cities to perform robust and consistent reporting of climate hazards and associated adaptation planning and implementation that is required by the Compact of Mayors;
• a means to monitor and evaluate adaptation planning progress to help cities improve adaptation efforts by enhancing knowledge of best practices;
• a means for cities to identify priorities and target advocacy for climate adaptation resources;
• the data to improve the ability for cities and their partners to identify peers and aspirational examples to help inform their own adaptation planning process and implementation.

Developed by
Arup

CRPT  

City Resilience Profiling Tool

The City Resilience Profiling Tool (CRPT) is a self-assessment tool primarily addressed to municipal leaders, managers, urban planners, and other personnel with a responsibility for ensuring the safety, maintenance, and security of all aspects and functions of an urban area, including critical infrastructure and services, health facilities, transport and telecommunications networks, sanitation, water, etc.

The City Resilience Profiling Programme (CRPP) designs this tool for generating metrics for urban resilience in order to establish baselines (or ‘profiles’) upon which to integrate resilience based inputs to sustainable urban planning, development, and management processes in cities and other human settlements throughout the world. The main goal of the CRPP is to support local governments and their stakeholders by transforming urban areas into safer and better places to live in, and improve their capacity to absorb and rebound quickly from any and all potential shocks or stresses.

Developed by
UN Habitat

RiskSpectrum®  

RiskSpectrum® is the product family name of one of the most advanced risk and reliability analysis software in the world.

It includes tools for fault tree and event tree modelling and analysis, documentation, risk monitoring, human reliability assessment, and failure mode and effect analysis.

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Developed by
Lloyd's Register

AdaptInfrastructure  

AdaptInfrastructure is the home of adaptation analysis. Here you get to drive the analysis according to different scenario settings you need. Test the effectiveness of adaptation options – from building with different materials, raising floor levels in a flood zone or increasing the design specifications in a wind zone.

Features are:

• Specify your inputs to refine your analysis
• Specify the time you want to apply each action, how much it will cost and which assets will be adapted
• Trial adaptation options to reduce the risk to your assets
• Compare the performance of adaptation pathways in terms of customers, cashflow, net present value and other KPIs
• Combine adaptation options to develop an optimal adaptation pathway

View case study

Developed by
XDI Cross Dependency Initiative

Climate Bonds Standard  

The CBI sets standards for physical climate resilience within components of certain sector guidance. The standards do not have a separate sector or category themselves on physical climate resilience.

Developed by
Climate Bonds Initiative

CWRA  

City Water Resilience Approach

The City Water Resilience Approach (CWRA) responds to a demand for innovative approaches and tools that help cities build water resilience at the urban scale. The CWRA was developed to help cities grow their capacity to provide high quality water resources for all residents, to protect them from water-related hazards, and to connect them through water-based transportation networks (“provide, protect, connect”).

The approach is the result of fieldwork and desk research, collaborative partnerships with subject matter experts, and direct engagement with city partners. Based on this research, the CWRA outlines a process for developing urban water resilience, and provides a suite of tools to help cities grow their capacity to survive and thrive in the face of water-related shocks and stresses. The approach details five steps to guide cities through initial stakeholder engagement and baseline assessment, through action planning, implementation and monitoring of new initiatives that build water resilience.

Developed by
The Resilience Shift

CDIA Project Screening  

CDIA Project Screening Tool

This tool aims to help cities identify and profile investments, particularly those prioritized in climate resilience strategies, to enhance opportunities for downstream finance.

CDIA focuses on developing investments in urban infrastructure and service between city-level urban strategies and implementing specific infrastructure projects with domestic, international, public, or private financing.

Developed by
Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA)

Green Evaluation  

We base our evaluation of an adaptation project on the increase in resilience the project is likely to provide for the covered geographical area or asset base. This results in the adaptation score.

First, we quantitatively evaluate the benefit of the added resilience, relative to the amount of the financing’s proceeds, on a five-point scale.

The benefit is the forecast reduction in the cost of expected damages caused by extreme weather events. It is based on an entity’s analysis, to which we may apply quantitative adjustments.

Second, we modify the evaluation score determined in the first step, based on our qualitative view of the adequacy of an entity’s quantification approach to determining the resilience benefit.

Third, we may apply additional adjustments in certain cases – for example, for projects that are in developing countries for which the resilience benefit may be understated because the likely significant social benefits are difficult to quantify.

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Developed by
S&P Global Ratings

EDGe$  

Economic Decision Guide Software

NIST had created EDGe$, based on the process found in the Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (EDG) and designed for use in conjunction with the NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (CRPG). EDGe$ is intended for community planners, resilience and budget officers, and the public.

The tool provides a transparent and flexible economic methodology based on best-practices for evaluating investment decisions aimed at improving the ability of communities to adapt to, withstand, and quickly recover from natural, technological, and human-caused disruptive events. The tool helps to identify and compare the relevant present and future resilience costs and benefits associated with new capital investment alternatives versus maintaining a community’s status-quo.

The case studies cited in the user manual are derived from the United States and the tool was developed with the United States context in mind.

Developed by
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Envision  

Envision is a groundbreaking resource for professionals involved in planning, designing, building, maintaining civil infrastructure. As a rating system for sustainable infrastructure, Envision is supported by a wide array of respected organisations involved in infrastructure design, construction, and operation.

Envision provides guidance on sustainable best practices at no cost to users, and serves not only as a planning and design tool, but also as means of evaluating infrastructure project once complete.

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Developed by
ISI and Zonfnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure (Harvard University)

Resilence Atlas  

The Resilience Atlas was developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to identify where projects should take place and allow users to derive insights of their own based on data. The developers believed that policymakers and donors needed to know where problems were occurring to know where to make investments.

The Resilience Atlas is an interactive analytical tool for building:

1. Understanding of the extent and severity of some of the key stressors and shocks that are affecting rural livelihoods, production systems, and ecosystems in the Sahel, Horn of Africa and South and Southeast Asia;
2. Insights into the ways that different types of wealth and assets (i.e. natural capital, human capital, social capital, financial capital and manufactured capital) and combinations among these – impact resilience in particular contexts.

The tool is a web-based open source mapping platform.

To date, the tool has been used at the national level, but there are opportunities to use the data at a more localized level. Data is available for all countries. This tool is primarily used in places where capacity for remote sensing and GIS is lower. “

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Developed by
Conservation International

RVR  

Resilience Value Realization

The Resilience Value Realization (RVR) methodology was developed by ValueLabs through funding from The Rockefeller Foundation to be used by city governments with project owners identified.

RVR is a customized approach to project planning, pre-development, and development that was designed to identify, catalyze and protect the delivery of resilience value to public and private stakeholders in a project. The RVR approach comprises working with project teams and resilience champions to be very specific about how the opportunity can create resilience and to address, as an integral part of project development, any challenges impacting the delivery of resilience value. The workshop is structured to start with understanding where things are today, then asks participants to develop an opportunity statement around where they want to be in the future, which leads to development of a roadmap for realizing that opportunity.

The tool is flexible and has also been used to identify and empower a project owner.
This tool is delivered as a workshop, but requires pre-work including interviews, data gathering, and data representation (drawings, maps, figures, etc.). This tool can be used in all geographic regions.

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Developed by
Marcela Ruibal

SuRe  

The Standard for Sustainable and Resilience Infrastructure (SuRe®)

SuRe® – the Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure is a third-party-verified, global voluntary standard, which drives the integration of sustainability and resilience aspects into infrastructure development and upgrade by providing guidance for infrastructure project developers, financiers and public-sector institutions. The Standard assesses infrastructure throughout the project life cycle at the design, construction and operational phases. SuRe® consists of 14 themes covering 61 criteria across environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in addition to two general reporting requirements for impact measurement.

SuRe® can be applied to all types of infrastructure, including critical infrastructure systems and infrastructure services, such as: Water (harvesting, storage, management, distribution, treatment and recycling); Energy (generation, storage and distribution); Solid waste (collection, distribution, processing, recycling and storage); Transport networks, nodes and fleet (pedestrian, bicycle, vehicular, rail, water-borne and air transportation); Communication networks (telephone, cellular and data); Social infrastructure (education, healthcare, sports and recreation, law enforcement, fire and emergency services); Food systems (production, storage, processing and distribution).

SuRe® development followed the ISEAL Alliance Codes of Good Practice for standard setting, and as of October 2018, SuRe® is the first infrastructure standard to be an Associate Member of ISEAL, the global membership association for credible and good practice in sustainability standards. Other members of ISEAL include FSC, Fair Trade, Better Cotton Initiative BCI, SA 8000 and others. The first certifiable version of the SuRe® Standard was released at COP23 2017. Since then, SuRe® has entered into the SuRe® Initial Implementation Phase 2018-2019 whereby projects will be assessed on all SuRe® material criteria and, if compliant, be awarded a SuRe® certification.

GIB has also developed the self-assessment tool based on the SuRe®, called The SmartScan. The SmartScan is an infrastructure self-assessment tool developed on the basis of the SuRe® Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, that provides a rapid assessment of an infrastructure project against sustainability and resilience criteria covering Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues.

SmartScan offers cities and project owners a practical and rapid way to:

• enhance their awareness about sustainability and resilience-related good practices;
• prepare projects for the scrutiny of financial services;
• increase the project attractiveness for potential investment.

The SmartScan has been applied to more than 25 infrastructure projects in the sectors of Water, Energy, Transport networks, Communication technologies installations, in countries such as China, Mexico, India, Philippines, Kosovo and Ecuador, with a total CAPEX of 18 Billions USD

Developed by
Global Infrastructure Basel

SAVi  

Sustainable Asset Valuation

Policy makers, infrastructure planners and investors all ask about the value-added of sustainable infrastructure.

• Are such assets more expensive to plan and build and finance?
• Do they bring better value for money?
• What are the risks associated with greener designs and cleaner technologies?

We are also waking up to reality of climate change and range of other environmental, social and economic risks. Insurance firm Swiss Re, estimates that in 2017, the economic losses from natural disasters was US$ 306 billion. This is almost the double of the losses in 2016, which was US$ 188 billion and also much higher than the 10-year-average of $190 billion.

Such risks and externalities are typically ignored in infrastructure finance analyses. The MAVA Foundation and IISD built SAVi to address such inconsistencies. We built SAVi to make the investment case for sustainable infrastructure.

Using SAVi

SAVi incorporates 3 fundamental features:

Valuation: SAVi values in financial terms, the material risks and co-benefits of infrastructure projects. We work with governments and investors to identify the risks material to their projects and design appropriate simulation scenarios.

Simulation: SAVi is unique in that it combines the results of systems thinking and system dynamics simulation with project finance modelling. We work with governments and investors to identify the material risks of each infrastructure project. We also identify co-benefits that contribute towards realising the UN sustainable development goals. We then determine the simulation scenarios.

Bespoke: The application of SAVi is bespoke. We customise SAVi to each individual infrastructure project. Such an approach is required as each project is characteristic of distinctive opportunities and risks.

SAVi can hence answered questions such as:

• Do sustainable infrastructure assets bring better financial returns than business-as-usual counterparts?
• What additional capital is required to make this asset more resilient to changing climates?
• In a given pipeline or portfolio, which asset make the higher contributions toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

The SAVi website is under construction.

View case study

Developed by
International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD)

CAT-I  

Capacity Assessment Tool for Infrastructure

The Capacity Assessment Tool for Infrastructure (CAT-I) is a tool developed by UNOPS to help countries facilitate better infrastructure development. The tool is designed to help governments identify gaps or challenges in the capacity of their enabling environment to plan, deliver, and manage sustainable, resilient, and inclusive infrastructure systems. Examples of the types of capacities assessed, include:

• Ability to identify the need for new assets or upgrades to existing assets based on current or future needs, including the achievement of development goals and aspirations;
• Existence and quality of policies and processes for the management of risk within the built environment;
• Existence and quality of codes, standards, and processes to support the proper design and construction of infrastructure;
• Cross sector topics like human skill sets, procurement processes, legal mechanisms, quality assurance and quality control mechanisms, and financial resources which support the planning, delivery and management of infrastructure;
• Ability to safely manage, operate, upgrade and decommission/repurpose infrastructure systems at end of useful life.

Based on the identified gaps or challenges faced by governments, the tool can then be used to develop a pipeline of projects to build national, state, city, or ministerial capacity using technical and advisory support.

To date, the tool has been used in: Nepal; Serbia; Mato Grosso State, Brazil; Turkana County, Kenya; and in three cities in The Gambia.

Developed by
UNOPS