This outcome will focus on supporting SIDS in deepening knowledge and broadening partnerships, both of which lay the foundations for the long-term sustainability of infrastructure assets and services. This outcome will focus on providing a better understanding of the effectiveness of institutions and financing actions, enabling them to educate the future generation of resilient infrastructure workforce in SIDS. The focus will be on implementing peer-to-peer exchanges and other learning opportunities across the SIDS regions and with the rest of the world outside of the SIDS regions. It will promote organisational collaborations such as academic partnerships across the SIDS regions, and encourage knowledge sharing and brokering, research innovation, and capacity development and capacity enhancement including sufficient engineering knowledge and skills for efficient design, preparation, construction, operation, and maintenance of infrastructure assets. All of these will provide a conceptual base for change and local capacity development—including mechanisms of knowledge transfer, promotion of innovative thinking, and project management.
The priority is to enable engagement across SIDS facing similar challenges and facilitate a platform for exchange of good practices, technologies and solutions for resilient infrastructure. The focus will be to enhance knowledge and information sharing on sustainable and resilient infrastructure planning, policies and practices and encourage multi-stakeholders’ dialogues. This will be done through facilitating exposure visits for peer learning, organizing south-south dialogues, knowledge sharing and dissemination events, learning sessions and workshops at international knowledge platforms and conferences such as International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI) , UN Climate Change Conferences, Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (GPDRR) and similar initiatives. The focus will also be to develop an interactive online knowledge portal on resilient infrastructure for SIDS.
Disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation actions such as developing strategic infrastructure investment plans and reducing infrastructure vulnerabilities are increasingly required as they represent necessary preparedness actions towards disaster and climate risks. The priority will be to support developing the capacity of SIDS through technical training programs for decision makers and government officials, practitioners focussed on infrastructure planning tools, vulnerability and risk assessment resources, disaster risk financing, developing strategic infrastructure investment plans, organizing stakeholder consultation workshops and peer and partner networking opportunities. The objective is to ensure that the target audience is trained to develop climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies, identify vulnerabilities, propose resilience measures to prevent risks to infrastructure and access technical and financial resources for the elaboration of plans, programs or projects for the implementation of adaptation actions in SIDS.
The priority is to focus on establishing dedicated partnerships with multiple stakeholders such as government agencies, research/academic institutions, financial institutions and international, private and civil society organizations working with SIDS, to drive the agenda of resilient infrastructure through technical assistance, capacity building and knowledge sharing. This will include academic partnerships with SIDS academic/research institutions to promote research and innovation on disaster resilient infrastructure (DRI) and develop DRI related education and curriculum. This will be part of CDRI’s larger initiative of establishing a global academic network for driving actionable research on DRI and leveraging the CDRI Fellowship program. The priority will also be to forge partnerships with civil society organizations and local stakeholders to document local adaptation strategies related to infrastructure, with a view to preserve and promote local solutions, including traditional knowledge and know-how for global learning. The focus will also be to forge partnerships with financial institutions, international and private sector organizations to ensure that SIDS have improved access to technical and financial resources for resilient infrastructure.