Décembre 2025
Banque Mondiale (58 pages).
Road networks are critical development lifelines, enabling the movement of people, goods, and essential services and underpinning economic growth and social well-being. Yet these networks are increasingly at risk from aging assets, deferred maintenance, and increasingly severe and frequent climate hazards. Adaptation needs in developing countries are projected to exceed hundreds of billions of dollars annually by 2030, underscoring the importance of directing limited resources toward the most critical and vulnerable sections of a road network.
In this context, effective prioritization of investments, efficient resource allocation, and strengthened asset management are essential to delivering value for money. Over the past decade, risk-based road prioritization and transport resilience analysis have evolved from highly specialized studies into practical, scalable approaches that are feasible and cost-effective for most countries, including those with limited data and institutional capacity. Early studies focused mainly on physical exposure and direct asset damage, offering useful but partial insights. More recent approaches increasingly recognize that resilience is multidimensional, encompassing risks at three levels: asset level (e.g., the vulnerability of individual road segments to hazards), system level (network disruption and loss of connectivity), and user level (impacts on people, markets, and essential services).
Drawing on a review of 50 transport resilience studies across the World Bank portfolio, this report finds that, despite wide variation in scope and analytical depth, road assessments generally follow a common sequence of analytical steps: (1) map hazard exposure, (2) assess asset-level vulnerability, (3) analyze system-level criticality and network effects, (4) identify resilience measures, and (5) prioritize interventions through economic analysis.
In practice, not all assessments apply the full sequence. Many studies focus on the earlier steps—typically exposure mapping and asset-level vulnerability analysis—and fewer extend to system-level analysis or economic prioritization This sequence has emerged progressively over time through practical application, enabling assessments to be scaled and adapted to different decision-making needs, data availability, and institutional capacities.
The report highlights two emerging tools that reflect recent advancements in the cost efficiency of resilience analysis. The Global Resilience Index (GRI), developed by the University of Oxford and widely applied by World Bank transport teams, is an open-source geospatial model that facilitates rapid, low-cost vulnerability assessments using open data. Its application in the Kyrgyz Republic and Nigeria demonstrates how the GRI can effectively screen road networks, identify priority segments, and support policy dialogue and the development of Country Climate Development Reports in contexts where data and resources are limited.
The report also highlights the Hazard & Risk Multi-Regional Assessment (HARMA) model, developed by the World Bank transport team. This model supports more in-depth analysis by assessing climate impacts on network performance, estimating economic losses from disruptions, and comparing adaptation options using cost-benefit metrics. A Pakistan case study illustrates how the HARMA model can be applied to prioritize investments, and provide economic justification for resilience interventions.
To facilitate practical application, the report includes a decision tree designed to help users choose between the GRI and HARMA models, depending on the purpose of the analysis, the availability of data, and analytical needs. The decision tree differentiates between rapid screening and diagnostic applications, for which GRI is typically well suited, and investment prioritization and appraisal decisions, where HARMA is more applicable.
This report also shares two additional case studies to highlight applications with distinctive operational value.
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