Displacing more than 4 million people from their homes and claiming the lives of more than 5,000 in the Philippines, Typhoon Haiyan, which hit parts of the archipelago in 2013, served as a wake-up call about the need to streamline recovery planning and ensure rapid access to post-disaster financing in one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. In the days and weeks after the typhoon, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, national and local governments faced prolonged delays as they strove to develop and implement recovery and reconstruction plans while also seeking the funding needed to implement those plans.

Determined to safeguard lives and livelihoods in the aftermath of disasters, the Philippines has rapidly accelerated its efforts to build the capacity and infrastructure to recover and rebuild faster and more efficiently in the decade since that storm. Support from GFDRR has enabled the country to make tremendous progress on that front—bringing the Philippines ever closer to its vision of a more resilient future through its Ready to Rebuild program.

A key focus in the partnership between the Philippines and GFDRR has been the development of PlanSmart, a digital application that enables automated generation of recovery and reconstruction plans for various disaster scenarios based on risk and hazard data. In addition to supporting the development of PlanSmart, GFDRR has supported the training of more than 2,300 national and local officials on risk-informed recovery planning, including over 500 who have been trained on how to use the application. The Philippine government has more recently developed versions of PlanSmart tailored to riskinformed planning in specific sectors such as housing and education.

The end result thus far is that 153 local governments in the Philippines have prepared recovery and reconstruction plans using PlanSmart, spanning five of the country’s most disaster-vulnerable regions, including Calabarzon, Caraga, Central Visayas, and the National Capital Region. The Philippines is among the first countries to automate and use digital technology in developing risk-informed disaster recovery plans.

In the event of a future disaster, local governments across the Philippines are now able to draw upon and customize the preformulated plans to develop recovery and reconstruction plans more quickly and more efficiently. A case in point is the Philippines’ Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which was able to prepare recovery and reconstruction plans rapidly after Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae, which hit the region in October 2022.

Even as PlanSmart means that local governments in many parts of the Philippines are now able to more quickly and more efficiently to develop recovery and reconstruction plans, these will go only as far as there is funding to turn the plans into reality—one of the lessons learned from Typhoon Haiyan. Hence, another major focus in the partnership between GFDRR and the Philippines has been the design and implementation of pre-arranged financing mechanisms that enable national and local governments to access post-disaster recovery and reconstructing financing without delay.

In April 2024, GFDRR helped the Philippines become the first country to adopt the rapid response option in the World Bank’s new crisis toolkit, which allows countries to repurpose a portion of their unused World Bank financing quickly to address emergency needs during a crisis. Moreover, over the past decade, GFDRR has helped pave the way for four World Bank disaster risk management (DRM) development policy loans with Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Options (Cat DDOs) for the Philippines. Cat DDOs are standby loan facilities that provide immediate liquidity in the aftermath of a disaster or emergency, contingent on policy actions designed to strengthen a country’s DRM capacity. Most recently, GFDRR’s technical assistance for strengthening the Philippines’ National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund facilitated a $500 DRM and climate development policy loan with a Cat DDO.

GFDRR’s most recent support to the Philippines builds on a longstanding partnership spanning nearly two decades. For instance, PlanSmart uses data from GeoRiskPH, the Philippine government’s centralized multi-hazard and multi-risk database. GFDRR previously supported the national and local governments in building their capacity to integrate climate and disaster hazard and risk information at national and local levels into GeoRiskPH, replacing what was once a highly fragmented system of hazard and risk information management in the country.