Pacific Maritime Transport Systems: Hazard Exposure Technical Note

This Technical Note supplements the overarching regional report 'A Blue Transformation for Pacific Maritime Transport (World Bank, 2022)'. It provides more detail on, and analysis of, natural hazards in the Pacific affecting port infrastructure and operations. While natural hazards are a major issue for all Pacific Island states and dependencies, this Technical Note looks particularly at the experiences of 12 World Bank member countries, referred to collectively as the PIC12 countries. These are the Melanesian countries of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji; the Polynesian countries of Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu; and the Micronesian countries of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Palau, Kiribati, and Nauru. This Note aims to assist technical specialists, client country teams, and donors, to identify needs and priorities for more detailed, site-specific risk studies. These risk studies will form the basis of port master planning, project design, asset management, and capital upgrade projects, as appropriate, to increase resilience in ports to the impacts of natural hazards. This Technical Note has six sections, as follows: overview: a summary of why Pacific ports is particularly exposed to natural hazards; mapping Pacific Islands’ Current Exposure to Hazards: descriptions of the seven natural hazards facing Pacific Island countries (PICs), and maps showing where in the Pacific their main impacts are felt; identifying where the greatest hazards lie, a hazard heat map for the pacific: quantitative and qualitative measures of the hazard intensities are summarized for primary and hub ports, with general observations and conclusions; current status of infrastructure upgrades in Pacific ports: a summary of work, both completed and planned, in each of the PIC12 primary ports, between 2007 and 2022; port master planning to future-proof Pacific ports: a brief outline of port master planning, strategic asset management and risk analysis, and principles of asset management for port infrastructure; and conclusions and recommendations.