Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are a diverse group of 57 countries and territories spread across the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean regions. Due to their size and remote locations, these are most vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events.

Under its flagship Infrastructure for Resilient Island States (IRIS) programme, CDRI is supporting 23 projects across 25 SIDS to achieve sustainable development through resilient, inclusive, and sustainable infrastructure. IRIS projects are funded through the Infrastructure Resilience Accelerator Fund (IRAF), a multi-partner trust fund established with support from the Governments of India, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and the European Union. Focus areas include policies and regulatory frameworks, national capacities, strengthening early warning and data systems, and span critical and social infrastructure sectors, including - Energy, Water and Sanitation, Telecommunications, Housing, Transport, Health, Education, and Coastal Infrastructure.

CDRI is also supporting capacity development, advancing knowledge, and fostering peer-learning in SIDS region through communities of practice, specialized training modules, interactive e-learning courses, learning webinars, and experiential visits. A dedicated Community of Practice on Building Climate and Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (DRI) in SIDS was established with 70+ experts to catalyze conversations between stakeholders and promote collaborative solutions for the challenges faced by SIDS. The CoP has issued a comprehensive Call to Action for Resilient Infrastructure for SIDS and Coastal Regions, laying out a 10-step strategic roadmap to protect highly vulnerable SIDS from escalating climate and disaster risks.

To disseminate the key lessons, impacts, and next steps from the first cohort projects that will reach operational closure in 2026, CDRI is hosting a Learning Webinars Series on "Infrastructure Resilience in Island States" in collaboration with IRIS project implementing partners. Commencing in September 2026, the webinars will be hosted on DRI Connect (CDRI’s knowledge exchange, learning, and collaborative platform) to share knowledge, good practices, and foster peer-to-peer learning in SIDS regions.

Each webinar will combine presentations by the implementing teams and government representatives along with reflections by IRIS donors, regional experts, and partner organizations to facilitate experiential learning across the SIDS regions. The presentations will emphasize the project approach, outcomes, learnings, and impacts and will adopt mixed methods, such as technical insights, training and awareness metrics, knowledge products developed, tools or data dashboard demonstrations, and testimonial videos.

IRIS Learning Webinar 1:

The first webinar in this series will spotlight the project titled Multi-threat Early Warning System in the Dominican Republic which is being hosted in collaboration with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) along with the Emergency Operations Centre (COE) of the Government of the Dominican Republic. The project enhances risk and vulnerability data management to strengthen emergency operations and support risk-informed infrastructure planning. Key achievements of the project include:

• Integration of disaster risk data from multiple agencies into a national platform, enabling authorities to visualize risks at the neighbourhood level and identify critical infrastructure hotspots.
• Development of a National Framework for implementation of the Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (SAT-M), providing structured guidance for coordinated risk management across institutions.
• Establishment of a geospatial platform that enables risk assessment at neighbourhood and local levels, now serving as a national reference tool for emergency planning, preparedness, and operational decision making.
• Strengthened public alert dissemination and operational coordination through a modernized Emergency Operations Center (COE) control panel and functional upgrades to the ‘Alerta-COE’ mobile application.

This webinar will elaborate on the impact of the project and will focus on the key achievements, challenges faced, measures taken to overcome these, knowledge materials and outputs developed, lessons learned, and the outreach and scaling up strategies.