Safer Schools Pacific Roadmap Technical Assistance

Safer Schools Pacific Roadmap Technical Assistance was a multiyear program of research and capacity-building activities carried out across the Pacific Island countries of Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu to increase the resilience of schools and the education sector to a range of hazards and disaster events. The program supported and complemented school retrofitting and reconstruction activities by the countries’ governments under the Pacific Resilience Program (PREP) and the Vanuatu Infrastructure Reconstruction and Improvement Project (VIRIP).

Activities supported by the World Bank

• Strengthening of the understanding of hazards, exposure factors, and drivers of risk that might compromise the planning, design, construction, repair, retrofitting, and operation of school infrastructure projects

• Assessment and analysis of common building types and the condition of existing school buildings

• Assessment, review, and compilation of regional hazard data needed for the undertaking of countrywide school infrastructure risk assessments  

• Identification of opportunities to strengthen the institutional environments and regulatory frameworks within which school infrastructure is planned, designed, constructed, operated, maintained, repaired, and retrofitted

• Provision of technical support to ongoing lending programs (PREP, VIRIP) to support the adoption of resilient design standards

• Provision of advice on school investment options to the respective governments of Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu

• Comparative and cost-benefit analysis for intervention scenarios used 

• Summarizing of lessons learned to build awareness and greater understanding of how hazards and drivers of risk compromise the planning, design, construction, repair, retrofitting, and operation of school infrastructure projects, and how these risks can be mitigated

Main outputs

• Series of countrywide, screening-level school hazard exposure maps

• High-level, countrywide school infrastructure risk assessment reports for Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu, including risk assessment of a total of 644 schools comprising 2,286 school buildings (558 in Samoa, 295 in Tonga, and 1,433 in Vanuatu)

• Proposal on the safer school intervention strategy and prioritization of school retrofitting and reconstruction options

• Completed methodology for retrofitting assessments and how-to guidelines and manuals for school retrofitting, construction, operation, and maintenance for existing schools

• School planning and community engagement guidelines and templates

• Workshops and training packages on safer schools