The International Good Practice Principles for Sustainable Infrastructure provide globally applicable guidance on the integration of sustainability throughout the entire infrastructure lifecycle, focussing on the “upstream” project level. They help high-level policy- and decision-makers in governments create the enabling environment for sustainable infrastructure that is needed to achieve the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. The ten principles emphasize the importance of infrastructure approaches that respond to service needs and demands, address sustainability the earliest possible in the planning process, integrate all aspects of sustainability as well as relevant governance frameworks and different infrastructure systems and sectors across time and space.

The report „Benchmarking Infrastructure Development 2020“ assesses the regulatory quality of large infrastructure projects through both Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and Traditional Public Investments (TPIs) in 140 and 40 economies respectively. The corresponding online platform highlights the key findings resulting from the data, organized around the infrastructure project cycle phases (regulatory & institutional framework, preparation, procurement, contract management, management of unsolicited proposals, infrastructure asset management). By providing actionable indicators, the tool supports evidence-based regulatory reforms to improve the enabling environment for developing quality infrastructure projects.

The National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) is a performance-based environmental impact rating system for existing buildings. Based on the analysis of real data, the tool allows to understand the environmental performance of any building – from offices over hotels to hospitals, from retail establishments over data centers to apartment buildings. The assessments are undertaken by independent assessors and audited by the government. Thereby, the tool facilitates smart and informed environmental decision making of developers, asset managers, and even tenants.

The Toolbox and Guidance for Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) aims to guide HRIA – which serve to identify, understand, assess and address the impact of business activities on human rights holders – for large-scale business projects and activities conducted at project or site level. The tool provides individual guidance documents for the different project lifecycle phases from planning and scoping to reporting and evaluation as well as case studies. Thereby, the tool supports human rights practitioners and businesses alike in conducting HRIA.

The Practical Guide describes how human rights aspects can be integrated into the routinely Guide Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessments (ESHIA) undertaken by the oil and gas industry. In three parts, the Guide (1) defines the industry’s potential human rights impacts, (2) provides practical guidance on applying a human rights lens to the industry’s activities and to the content of each step of the ESHIA process, and (3) looks at the human rights issues that are applicable across the ESHIA process.

NISMOD (National Infrastructure Systems Model) is a system-of-systems modelling platform that works in three main domains: (1) long-term strategic infrastructure planning, (2) infrastructure for sustainable development and (3) risk and resilience assessment. It serves to develop interdependent infrastructure systems models based on different development scenarios and strategies for infrastructure provision and to develop and measure the metrics of (future) infrastructure performance. The platform comprises simulation models of (1) infrastructure systems, (2) integration frameworks and libraries to enable analysis, and (3) databases and systems to manage datasets, model configuration, inputs and outputs, all contributing to evidenced-based and integrated decision-making at upstream level.

The African Development Bank’s Environmental and Social Assessment Procedures (ESAP) support the integration of environmental, climate change and social considerations in projects and programs of the Bank and its borrowers. The ESAP describe the assessment procedure for different project types and across the full lifecycle from country programming to post completion. Thereby, the ESAP support decision-making and improvement of project results, ensuring that Bank-financed operations conform to the requirements laid out in the operational safeguards (OS) and are thus sustainable.

The Infrastructure Transparency Index (ITI) can be used to measures the level of transparency of the infrastructure sector and the quality of related participation and accountability processes at national or sub-national level. Thereby, the tool aims to assess the state of infrastructure transparency and the capacity to improve transparency among procuring agencies, to track process and facilitate peer learning and to raise awareness of transparency. The ITI sets out the methodology for score calculation to evaluate procuring entities. Individual scores are then used to generate an index that allows for performance comparison.

The Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Guidelines contain the EHS performance levels and measures that The World Bank Group requires its clients and borrowers of to apply to their projects. This implies the identification of EHS project hazards and associated risks across all the Guidelines’ dimensions, involvement of EHS professionals in project preparation, priorization of risk management strategies that eliminate the causes of hazards or, if not feasible, of consequence-minimizing controls, and monitoring and community preparation activities, among other. When host country regulations differ from the EHS Guidelines, projects will be required to achieve whichever is more stringent.

The SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting is a measurement framework for biophysical data, tracking changes and linking them to economic and other human activity from the perspective of entire ecosystems, considering how individual environmental assets interact as part of natural processes within a given spatial area. To do so, the tool applies the accounting concepts and rules to the emerging field of ecosystem assessment and measurement in response to demands for integrated information on environmental sustainability, human wellbeing and economic growth and development. It offers a system of five accounts that together present comprehensive view of ecosystems and their services.