Building Resilience Index with Bureau Veritas Vietnam

What is BRI & why does it matter in Vietnam?

In the context of increasingly severe climate change, Vietnam is facing a clear rise in both the frequency and intensity of natural hazards from tropical storms and flooding to extreme heatwaves. In 2025 alone, several regions, particularly Central Vietnam, experienced significant damage, disrupting business operations and causing substantial asset losses. This underscores an urgent need: organizations must move beyond reactive measures and proactively assess and strengthen the resilience of their built assets.

The Building Resilience Index (BRI), developed by IFC (a member of the World Bank Group), is a tool designed to help organizations shift from recovery to prevention reducing repair costs, enhancing safety, and ensuring operational continuity during natural disasters. BRI provides a standardized assessment framework based on four key hazard categories:

• Wind (changes in wind speed): tropical cyclones, tornadoes, downbursts
• Water (changes in rainfall, flow, and water levels): flooding, flash floods, storm surge, tsunamis
• Fire (temperature-related risks): wildfires, localized fires
• Geoseismic (ground movement): earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides

Through this approach, BRI identifies the “weakest link” in a building’s resilience profile and recommends targeted improvement measures. Rather than addressing consequences after disasters occur, BRI enables developers, hospitality operators, financial institutions, insurers, and public authorities to clearly understand vulnerabilities, assess risk levels, and prioritize interventions ensuring safety, operational stability, and long-term risk reduction.

In Vietnam, BRI is particularly relevant as it supports compliance with increasing ESG transparency requirements from investors, lenders, insurers, and regulators. A BRI-verified asset not only demonstrates enhanced resilience but also gains a clear competitive advantage: improved access to green finance, optimized insurance premiums, and increased asset value.

BRI Rating Levels

The BRI rating scale includes: NR (Not Resilient), B (Basic), A (Advanced), AA (Global Best Practice). A “+” designation indicates the implementation of Operational Continuity measures.