3rd World Reconstruction Conference

General Information

The third edition of the World Reconstruction Conference (WRC3) took place in Brussels from June 6-8, 2017. Co-organized by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, the conference sought to promote resilience through post-crisis recovery. WRC3 was held in conjunction with European Development Days 2017. Over 500 experts and practitioners from governments, international organizations, NGOs, academia, and the private sector attended the conference sessions and plenaries, sharing best practices and lessons on recovery and exploring the nexus between resilient recovery efforts and sustainable poverty reduction.

Session "Building Regulations and Standards for long-term resilience"

In the last decade, low- and middle-income countries have experienced 53 percent of all disasters globally—but have accounted for 93 percent of disaster-related fatalities1. This disproportionate impact stems in large part from unsafe and unregulated urban development. Reforming building regulatory processes and implementing improved building standards can help avoid unnecessary costs and losses in the event of the next disaster.

In this context, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) co-leaded with the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) a session on “Recovery Opportunity: Building Regulations and Standards for Long-term Resilience. The session objective was to present the opportunities for using post-disaster recovery and reconstruction as an investment in effective and sustainable mechanisms for risk reduction in the built environment. The session was supported/consulted by DG GROW, DG DEVCO, DG CLIMA, DG EAC, EEAS, etc.

The session highlighted the opportunities arising from post-disaster reforming processes and improvements in building regulations and standards to achieve a wide range of health, safety and civil right objectives and reduce cost and losses in future disaster events.

The example of the Eurocodes was discussed by CEN-CENELEC Director of Innovation, noting that they are already used in different regulatory systems due to their flexibility to adapt to each country’s specific climatic and geological conditions and construction traditions.

Ms. Charlina Vitcheva, Deputy Director-General of European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) delivered an opening speech at the session "Building Regulations and Standards for long-term resilience" and stressed the importance of building codes and standards as valuable mechanism for capturing experience and effectively transferring scientific and technical knowledge to construction practice and community resilience.

Key messages and outcomes from the session:

• Post-disaster recovery is a unique opportunity to grasp the prospects arising from reforming processes and improvements in building codes and standards to achieve a wide range of health, safety and civil rights objectives and help to reduce cost and losses in future disaster events.
• Regulatory capacity is of strategic importance for prevention and for efficient post-disaster recovery: the countries should keep preparing for reconstruction in advance, so that they can react in a proper way when a disaster hits.
• The regulatory preparedness for post-disaster recovery and building long-term resilience shall be considered at the same level of importance as the emergency preparedness.

Conference technical exhibition

The JRC was represented in an EU stand with a booth dedicated to the Eurocodes. The objective was to inform the exhibition visitors about the Eurocodes and the available training material for designers.