Glossary

Inter-American Development Bank definition of sustainable infrastructure:
“Sustainable infrastructure refers to infrastructure projects that are planned, designed, constructed, operated, and decommissioned in a manner to ensure economic and financial, social, environmental (including climate resilience), and institutional sustainability over the entire life cycle of the project”

Source: Inter-American Development Bank (2018), What is Sustainable Infrastructure? A Framework to Guide Sustainability Across the Project Cycle, IDB, Washington, D.C., http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0001043.

Affordability should be considered taking into account the entire life cycle costs of infrastructure projects; from a government’s perspective means that projects can be accommodated within the government’s current and future budget constraints; from the end-users perspective refers to the ability and willingness to pay the tariffs or other user charges associated with the access and use of the infrastructure asset.

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure

Critical infrastructure are systems, assets, facilities and networks that provide essential services for the functioning of the economy and the security, safety and well-being of the population.

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure

Fiscal sustainability is the ability of a government to maintain public finances at a credible and serviceable position over the long term, taking into account debt servicing costs and future socio-economic and environmental factors that challenge public budgets.

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure

Governance of infrastructure means the policies, frameworks, norms, processes and tools, used by public bodies to plan, make decisions, implement and monitor the entire life cycle of public infrastructure.

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure

Life cycle of public infrastructure means the series of stages during the lifetime of a public infrastructure asset, starting from planning, prioritisation and funding, to the design,  procurement, construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning.

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure

Resilience means the capacity of systems to absorb a disturbance, recover from disruptions and adapt to changing conditions while retaining essentially the same function as prior to the disruptive shock at an acceptable service level (e.g. climate and geological hazards, industrial accidents, terrorist or cyberattacks).

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure

Stakeholders are any interested and/or affected party, including: individuals, regardless of their age, gender, sexual orientation, religious and political affiliations; and institutions and organisations, whether governmental or non-governmental, from civil society, academia, the media or the private sector.

Source: OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure