Disaster and climate resilient infrastructure put under spotlight at India's ICDRI 2023 international conference

Up until a few decades ago, businesses were focused on selling as much as possible, disregarding the environmental impact and longevity of their products. This resulted in reckless exploitation of natural resources and production of short-lived products, even for crucial infrastructure. But with global climate changing and disasters becoming more frequent, the need for resilient infrastructure has become more pressing than ever.

Acknowledging this need, India launched the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) in 2019 to ensure nations promote sustainability and resilience of new and existing infrastructure systems and help mitigate damage from climate disaster strikes.

Currently, i.e. on April 4-5, the CDRI is hosting the fifth edition of the International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI) in New Delhi. This event aims to bring "solutions integrating resilience in infrastructure to ensure access, delivery and continuity of essential services to people and communities".

Inaugurating the conference on Tuesday, PM Narendra Modi said: “Infrastructure is not only about returns, but also about reach and resilience. Infrastructure must leave none behind and serve the people even during time of crisis. A holistic view of infrastructure is needed. Studying past disasters and learning lessons from them is the way.”

“I am confident that the deliberations at ICDRI 2023 will provide a pathway to achieve the shared vision of a more resilient world,” he added.

The two-day conference will feature over 17 sessions convening almost a 100 global experts who plan to rattle discussions around disaster and climate resilient infrastructure, risk-informed systems, resilient infrastructure assets and innovative financing methods.

In addition, key findings from the first phase of the Global Study on Disaster Resilience of Airports study conducted on 111 airports across 56 countries will also be discussed. CDRI hopes this will help airports cope and quickly bounce back any stresses it might be subjected to during disasters. Airports are a crucial link for humanitarian operations during disaster events, and therefore, investing in resilient airports is important, CDRI stresses.

The event will also see MOUs signed between the CDRI and Adaptation Research Alliance, as well as the launch of the Infrastructure Resilience Academic eXchange (IRAX).

IRAX, along with the new CDRI Fellowship programme that is also due to be announced at the conference, seeks to empower the next generation of infrastructure professionals to develop actionable and scalable solutions for real life disaster resilient infrastructure — an extremely crucial need of the hour, especially in countries like India undergoing a rapid infrastructure boom.

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