Janvier 2026
Cour des Comptes Européenne (36 pages).

Les mégaprojets sont essentiels à l’achèvement du réseau transeuropéen de transport de l’UE. En 2020, nous avions publié un rapport spécial qui faisait état de retards importants, d’augmentations des coûts, d’une mauvaise coordination entre les États membres et de faiblesses dans la supervision exercée par la Commission. Le présent rapport propose de refaire un point, en tenant compte des évolutions intervenues depuis lors. Nous avons constaté une nouvelle hausse du coût global des mégaprojets, principalement due à deux d’entre eux, ainsi que des retards supplémentaires qui impliquent que le réseau central de l’UE ne sera pas achevé pour l’échéance de 2030. En 2024, de nouvelles dispositions légales ont été introduites, susceptibles d’améliorer la supervision exercée par la Commission sur la mise en œuvre du réseau, mais ces changements concerneront surtout les projets lancés après les mégaprojets que nous avons audités.

Décembre 2025
Commission européenne (110 pages).

ECO’s 2025 Analytical Report on Skills provides an in-depth analysis of the construction workforce across the EU, examining employment trends, workforce demographics, education and training, and future skills needs. The report explores how skills demand is evolving towards 2030 and 2050 in the context of the green and digital transition, offering valuable evidence to inform policy development and strategic planning in the construction ecosystem.

Décembre 2025
Banque Mondiale (58 pages).

Road networks are critical development lifelines, enabling the movement of people, goods, and essential services and underpinning economic growth and social well-being. Yet these networks are increasingly at risk from aging assets, deferred maintenance, and increasingly severe and frequent climate hazards. Adaptation needs in developing countries are projected to exceed hundreds of billions of dollars annually by 2030, underscoring the importance of directing limited resources toward the most critical and vulnerable sections of a road network.
In this context, effective prioritization of investments, efficient resource allocation, and strengthened asset management are essential to delivering value for money. Over the past decade, risk-based road prioritization and transport resilience analysis have evolved from highly specialized studies into practical, scalable approaches that are feasible and cost-effective for most countries, including those with limited data and institutional capacity. Early studies focused mainly on physical exposure and direct asset damage, offering useful but partial insights. More recent approaches increasingly recognize that resilience is multidimensional, encompassing risks at three levels: asset level (e.g., the vulnerability of individual road segments to hazards), system level (network disruption and loss of connectivity), and user level (impacts on people, markets, and essential services).
Drawing on a review of 50 transport resilience studies across the World Bank portfolio, this report finds that, despite wide variation in scope and analytical depth, road assessments generally follow a common sequence of analytical steps: (1) map hazard exposure, (2) assess asset-level vulnerability, (3) analyze system-level criticality and network effects, (4) identify resilience measures, and (5) prioritize interventions through economic analysis.
In practice, not all assessments apply the full sequence. Many studies focus on the earlier steps—typically exposure mapping and asset-level vulnerability analysis—and fewer extend to system-level analysis or economic prioritization This sequence has emerged progressively over time through practical application, enabling assessments to be scaled and adapted to different decision-making needs, data availability, and institutional capacities.
The report highlights two emerging tools that reflect recent advancements in the cost efficiency of resilience analysis. The Global Resilience Index (GRI), developed by the University of Oxford and widely applied by World Bank transport teams, is an open-source geospatial model that facilitates rapid, low-cost vulnerability assessments using open data. Its application in the Kyrgyz Republic and Nigeria demonstrates how the GRI can effectively screen road networks, identify priority segments, and support policy dialogue and the development of Country Climate Development Reports in contexts where data and resources are limited.
The report also highlights the Hazard & Risk Multi-Regional Assessment (HARMA) model, developed by the World Bank transport team. This model supports more in-depth analysis by assessing climate impacts on network performance, estimating economic losses from disruptions, and comparing adaptation options using cost-benefit metrics. A Pakistan case study illustrates how the HARMA model can be applied to prioritize investments, and provide economic justification for resilience interventions.
To facilitate practical application, the report includes a decision tree designed to help users choose between the GRI and HARMA models, depending on the purpose of the analysis, the availability of data, and analytical needs. The decision tree differentiates between rapid screening and diagnostic applications, for which GRI is typically well suited, and investment prioritization and appraisal decisions, where HARMA is more applicable.
This report also shares two additional case studies to highlight applications with distinctive operational value.

Décembre 2025
Forum Economique Mondial (44 pages).

Despite the centrality of water, and the fact that existing circular solutions, technologies and innovative finance are expanding the tools available to modernize water systems, investment remains insufficient. A projected €6.5 trillion infrastructure gap by 2040 could leave billions of people exposed to absent or outdated systems. Responding to calls from leading intergovernmental organizations, this paper amplifies the voice of the global water industry within the World Economic Forum ecosystem. Developed in collaboration with Acea and the University of Cambridge, it quantifies the global infrastructure gap, assesses the socio-economic benefits of closing it, and offers a strategic playbook for advancing equitable access, infrastructure resilience, circularity and innovation. Drawing on 27 best practices, it shows that solutions already exist and can be adapted and scaled. Above all, it calls for coordinated leadership and a renewed commitment to water stewardship.

Décembre 2025
 PPIAF, Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (81 pages).

The PPIAF Annual Report 2025 showcases how public-private partnerships are advancing resilient, inclusive infrastructure across emerging markets and developing economies. Spanning insights and case studies from 131 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia & the Pacific, Latin America & the Caribbean, and beyond, the report details PPIAF’s track record in helping mobilize over $30 billion in private capital since inception, with a further $3 billion in the pipeline. It highlights a strong sustainability focus—100% of approved activities are gender-informed and 90% have climate co-benefits—while underscoring the imperative to strengthen policy, regulatory, and institutional frameworks to attract and sustain investment. Designed for governments, investors, and development partners, the report offers practical pathways to bridge the global infrastructure financing gap and accelerate growth, making a compelling case for scaled, climate-smart, and inclusive PPP solutions now.

Novembre 2025
Nations Unies (124 pages).

Ths report highlights the key findings of the 2025 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, offering an overview of global urban transformation. It integrates worldwide and regional trends with detailed country-level insights spanning from 1950 to 2050, showing that the world is becoming increasingly urban, with cities now home to 45 per cent of the global population of 8.2 billion. This is more than double the share in 1950. The report summarizes the latest estimates of city, town and rural populations for 237 countries or areas from 1950 to 2025, with projections until 2050.
- In 1950, city living was relatively unusual: just 20 per cent of the world’s 2.5 billion people lived in cities, defined as population centres with at least 50,000 inhabitants and a density of at least 1,500 people per km2. Following many decades of urbanization, cities are now (in 2025) home to 45 per cent of the world’s 8.2 billion people, more than double the proportion in 1950.
- The share of the global population living in towns, defined as population clusters of at least 5,000 inhabitants and a density of at least 300 people per km2, declined gradually from 40 per cent in 1950 to 36 per cent in 2025.
- Rural communities are less densely populated than cities and towns. Today, they are home to just 19 per cent of the global population, a share that has fallen by half since 1950.
- Projections indicate that two thirds of the growth of the world’s population between now and 2050 will take place in cities, with most of the remainder concentrated in towns. The size of the global rural population is expected to peak sometime during the 2040s and then begin to decline.
- Urbanization is one of the most significant demographic shifts in human history, fundamentally altering how and where people live, work and build communities across the globe.
- The number of megacities quadrupled from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 in Asia. Projections indicate that there will be 37 megacities globally by 2050, as the populations of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (United Republic of Tanzania), Hajipur (India) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) grow to over 10 million.
- Jakarta (Indonesia) is the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million inhabitants in 2025, followed by Dhaka (Bangladesh) with almost 37 million and Tokyo (Japan) with 33 million. Cairo (Egypt) is the only city among the world’s ten largest that is not located in Asia.
- Fast-growing Dhaka is expected to become the world’s largest city by mid-century. Karachi (Pakistan) will enter the top ten by 2030 and could rank fifth by 2050. Meanwhile, Tokyo is projected to fall in rank from third in 2025 to seventh in 2050, as its population shrinks to around 31 million. More people live in small and medium-sized cities than in megacities; many of these smaller settlements are among the fastest growing, especially in Africa and Asia.
- The total number of cities worldwide more than doubled between 1975 and 2025. Among the world’s 12,000 cities, 96 per cent have fewer than 1 million inhabitants, and 81 per cent have populations below 250,000. This distribution underscores that the majority of the world’s urban population resides not in megacities, but in small and medium-sized urban centres that play a critical role in shaping sustainable urban development. By 2050, there could be more than 15,000 cities in the world, mostly with populations below 250,000.
Of the roughly 400 cities that grew faster than 4 per cent per year between 2015 and 2025, one third were in sub-Saharan Africa and another quarter were in Central and Southern Asia. Over two thirds had fewer than 250,000 inhabitants.
- Smaller settlements often lack the planning capacity and resources to manage their growth sustainably. They can benefit from improved access to basic services, better land-use management and increased connectivity. Growth of the world’s city population between now and 2050 will be concentrated in seven countries.
- Taken together, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Bangladesh and Ethiopia are expected to add more than 500 million city residents between 2025 and 2050, accounting for over half of the projected 986 million increase in the global number of city dwellers over that period.
- The success or failure of urbanization in these key countries will shape global development outcomes. Their ability to manage city growth sustainably will have profound implications not only for their populations but also for global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals and climate objectives.

Novembre 2025
CNUCED, Conférence des Nations unies sur le commerce et le développement (74 pages).

International investment in sustainable infrastructure – including both hard infrastructure sectors like transport and energy, and soft infrastructure sectors such as health, education, water, and sanitation – remains insufficient in both volume and distribution. Sectoral and geographical diversity is lacking, with the poorest and smallest countries often bypassed despite their urgent financing needs.
Public private partnerships (PPPs) offer significant potential to help close the sustainable development goals (SDG) financing gap. Among PPPs, international PPPs – those involving international investors as project sponsors, and the focus of this report – are relatively significant contributors to investment in developing economies. Their impact is particularly notable in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), where they account for roughly one-third of all PPP projects, compared with less than 20 per cent in other developing economies.
Nevertheless, international investment in PPPs in developing countries remains insufficient. Two major imbalances shape international PPP activity: sectoral and geographical. From a sectoral perspective, since 2015, renewable energy has been dominant, accounting for over 70 per cent of projects. While this reflects strong momentum in sustainable infrastructure it also highlights limited diversification into other critical sectors such as transport, and social infrastructure. Geographically, activity remains highly concentrated, with ten developing countries, led by Brazil, India, Chile, Viet Nam and the Philippines, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of all international PPP projects. In contrast, many smaller or lower income economies remain largely excluded from international PPP flows.
Structural constraints, such as high perceived risks and limited institutional capacity, continue to hinder progress. Unlocking the full potential of PPPs requires long-term government planning, strengthened regulatory frameworks, and robust institutional frameworks and dedicated PPP units with sufficient authority to manage complex projects. In addition, it requires improved project bankability. Risk mitigation instruments, often provided by multilateral development banks (MDBs), can support this and help build investor confidence.
The findings of this report highlight four critical dimensions that must be addressed to advance international investment in sustainable infrastructure: robust legal frameworks, integrated planning and contract design, innovative financing mechanisms, and strengthened implementation and management capacity.

Octobre 2025
Mc Kinsey (9 pages).

Humanoid robots are still at the pilot stage but could emerge as the solution to the construction sector’s productivity problem. How can industry leaders prepare for their entry into the workforce?

Octobre 2025
Banque Mondiale (42 pages).

Global PPI investments rebounded in 2024 after a few years of declining investments and depict variance across regions. In regions like MENA, ECA, and SSA — which are characterized by geopolitical, macroeconomic, and regulatory uncertainties — PPI activity has been heavily supported by Development and Export Finance Institutions (DEFI) involvement. Although overall PPI declined in MENA, nearly all projects in the region (7 out of 8) were backed by DEFIs, underscoring their critical role in mobilizing private capital by mitigating risks in the more challenging investment environments.
In contrast to the overall rebound in LMICs 2024, PPI investment in IDA countries fell to $3.0 billion across 33 projects, down 38 percent from 2023 and 57 percent below the five-year average. Strikingly, 88 percent of projects in IDA countries depended on DEFI support, underscoring the indispensable role played by DEFIs in sustaining investment flows in IDA countries, where private capital remains constrained.
Renewable energy projects continue to dominate PPI investments in the energy sector, but DEFI-backed renewable energy projects fell from 56 percent of all electricity generation
projects in 2019 to just 16 percent in 2024 — reflecting stronger investor confidence in the renewables sector and growing commercial viability. Rather than creating dependency,
DEFIs appear to be enabling greater self-sufficiency in key subsectors. This shift highlights the evolving role of development finance—from primary funders to strategic enabler of sustainable private capital flows.

Octobre 2025
Banque Interaméricaine de Développement (192 pages).

Public transport is essential for promoting social inclusion, productivity, and sustainability in the cities of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, achieving these benefits largely depends on the capacity of transport systems to ensure stable, efficient, and sustainable funding and financing.
Public transport systems in the region face increasing economic pressures due to a persistent decline in demand, limited fare policies, and rising operating costs. This combination puts additional strain on fare revenues and deepens their dependence on subsidies, representing one of the main challenges to the economic sustainability of public transport.
This document analyzes the current state of public transport funding and financing in the region, identifying the structural causes that have led to this situation. It also highlights good practices and success stories that offer valuable lessons to help reverse current trends. Based on this analysis, the document proposes a set of policy guidelines and recommendations for decision-makers and planners aimed at advancing toward more sustainable funding schemes and improving access to financing, in order to strengthen public transport as a driver of sustainable urban development in the region.

Octobre 2025
Banque Interaméricaine de Développement (168 pages).

Latin America and the Caribbean face weather variations and natural disasters that increasingly disrupt transport, energy, water, and sanitation services and disproportionately harm the most vulnerable populations. This volume, From Risk to Reliability: Resilient Infrastructure Services to Face Nature's Challenges, offers a comprehensive framework for action to invest better, not just more, in resilient infrastructure.
Resilience refers to the ability of infrastructure systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and quickly recover from shocks, while learning over time. It is not indestructibility but an adaptive approach that weighs social costs and benefits under uncertainty to reduce risk, protect the continuity and quality of service, and speed recovery.
The report diagnoses the risks and vulnerabilities that infrastructure systems face in the region. It shows how gradual climatic changes (rising temperatures and sea levels), extreme weather events (such as droughts, storms, and floods), and geophysical disasters (such as earthquakes) affect both the demand and supply of infrastructure services. Beyond asset damage, disruptions to service provision generate cascading effects on households, firms, and the broader economy. The report then reviews the policy and technical toolkit available to embed resilience across planning, design, operation, and maintenance, including discussions on the need for updated standards, risk-based prioritization, adaptive planning, network diversification, and redundancy. It also covers the role of nature-based solutions and demand-side adaptation measures. Finally, the report examines the funding and financing mechanisms needed to close the resilience investment gap, calling for innovation on both fronts. It underscores the importance of robust enabling environments to attract and sustain investment at scale. However, unlocking the full potential of resilient infrastructure requires not only mobilizing more capital but also aligning funding structures with the unique characteristics of resilience investments.
These three dimensions are interdependent: effective resilience integrates robust risk assessment, adaptive planning, and innovative finance, supported by capable institutions, cross-sector coordination, and evidence-based policymaking. The stakes are high, but the payoff is clear: investing in resilience lowers lifecycle costs, safeguards service continuity, and opens new opportunities, especially for the most vulnerable. The report provides a technically grounded, actionable path to move from risk to reliability while setting a focused research agenda to close remaining evidence gaps.

Septembre 2025
Mc Kinsey (56 pages).

Infrastructure is a critical enabler of long-term global economic growth, supporting prosperous societies, elevated standards of living, and every modern industry. But the ongoing expansion and evolution of what infrastructure comprises has transformed its definition, demanding a fundamental mindset shift among governments, investors, and industry operators about how to fund, build, use, and maintain it. Even as infrastructure verticals are evolving individually, their new intersections form another aspect of evolution.
McKinsey estimates that a cumulative $106 trillion in investment will be necessary through 2040 to meet the need for new and updated infrastructure. The required investment spans seven critical infrastructure verticals, with transport and logistics requiring the largest share ($36 trillion), followed by energy and power ($23 trillion), digital ($19 trillion), social ($16 trillion), waste and water infrastructure ($6 trillion), agriculture ($5 trillion), and defense ($2 trillion).
A confluence of global forces is accelerating the need for infrastructure investment. Outdated assets, rapid urbanization, geopolitical shifts, and technological advancements are exposing the limitations of yesterday’s infrastructure.
These forces are also changing the very definition of infrastructure. Traditionally, the term has been synonymous with assets such as power grids, roads, ports, and bridges. More recently, advances in technology have meant that newer assets such as fiber-optic networks, hyperscale data centers, and electric-vehicle charging stations are increasingly vital. These modern types of infrastructure share traits with “traditional” infrastructure, including long lifespans, significant initial investment, predictable and resilient cash flows, and critical economic roles.
A supporting layer of specialized services — maintenance, inspection, compliance, and remote monitoring — ensures these assets remain operational and are increasingly considered to be infrastructure as well. Governments and investors must fund these supporting services alongside critical assets.
At the same time, the boundaries between infrastructure verticals are blurring. Many of today’s most critical needs — such as infrastructure to support the deployment of artificial intelligence and the energy transition — exist at the intersections of the verticals. This report explores these intersections in depth and reveals why a siloed approach to infrastructure planning and investment may no longer be viable. Governments, investors, and operators will want to reflect on these interconnections and pursue integrated strategies that best deliver the mix of infrastructure that society needs to prosper.
Private capital is playing an increasingly important role in delivering infrastructure that sits at these intersections and within verticals. Private infrastructure assets under management surged from about $500 billion in 2016 to $1.5 trillion in 2024, reflecting its new position as the most desired asset class for increased investment. Investments will focus within and at the intersection of seven critical verticals, which this report explores in depth: energy, power, and resources; transportation and logistics; agriculture; digital and communications; waste and water; social; and defense.
To mobilize capital at the required scale, stakeholders can adopt clear, practical, and novel strategies. Policymakers can consider meeting the moment and strategically prioritizing verticals by creating frameworks to attract private capital, streamlining regulatory processes and repurposing underused assets. Investors can broaden their scope by embracing cross-vertical plays and thematic investment opportunities while considering new financing structures that align with long-term asset performance.
Finally, infrastructure operators should strive for efficiency gains and improved asset resilience by integrating technology solutions. The next decade will be a defining one for global infrastructure. Those who act decisively today will shape the future of connectivity, economic growth, and societal well-being for generations to come.