Making Resilient Infrastructure the New Ideal

The Atlas Initiative has undertaken a series of initiatives, policies, partnerships, and activities to bring the relevant organizations and institutions into closer alignment to lift resilient infrastructure as the new ideal for planning, procurement, and construction. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has done an outstanding job of showing what their 38 countries are doing to advance resilient infrastructure.

The need for hard infrastructure is rising as a top priority for every country, but so is the demand for natural infrastructure, our forests and coastlines, our rivers and lakes, our nature-based solutions that protect free ecological goods and biodiversity. So too, infrastructure has expanded its reach into what is called soft infrastructure, just as soft power and soft energy path have become commonplace. Many societies are defining it more broadly to include aspects of education and health that were somewhat outside the target zone in the past.