CoP 28 : Good use of data is key to mitigating the climate emergency 

MapAction urges world leaders and stakeholders gathered at COP28 to promote data-driven solutions to improve the lives of people on the front lines of climate change. (A version of this article was first published before CoP27 in Egypt in 2022. It was updated for CoP28 in November 2023. )

In recent years we have seen a large increase in the number of natural disasters worldwide. Regular climate-related disasters are exacerbating water and food insecurity. 

How emergency relief stakeholders and governments coordinate their responses to the climate emergency can impact the recovery of affected communities. That is why good data is key to preparedness and mitigation, especially in locations with limited resources. 

Ice and snow on the Hindu Kush mountain range, which runs along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is melting and causing devastating floods in both countries. Photo: MapAction

As the changing climate ravages and displaces some of the world’s poorest communities, good data use will not prevent such climate-driven occurrences. It can only soften the effects by helping the affected communities, and stakeholders, to be prepared and to coordinate relief strategies. Good use of data in decision-making at key moments can reduce the human cost of the climate emergency. 

“Data, often visualised through maps, can help identify who the most vulnerable people are, where they are, and highlight need,” said Nick Moody, MapAction’s chair of trustees, before CoP27 in 2022. “At CoP27 there was a recognition that while this information is critical during a crisis, it can have an even greater effect if used in advance. MapAction has a huge role to play in helping others to build resilience through data.”

Why MapAction?

Since MapAction’s inception over 20 years ago, the charity has provided data and specialist technical geospatial and data volunteers in more than 140 crises, many climate-related, worldwide. Our team has supported responses alongside UN, regional and national agencies as well as INGOs and local civil society organisations, providing relief to some of the most vulnerable climate-exposed people worldwide. 

READ ALSO: MapAction urges wider adoption of GIS for disaster resilience at UN Expert Meeting

Our 70+ volunteers come from across the ever-growing range of sectors using data and geospatial technology, bringing a huge diversity of technical expertise. MapAction gives them the training, operational experience and support needed to operate effectively in humanitarian situations. 

Working in collaboration with many emergency relief partners, our teams create unique situation maps, data visualisations, data sets and other products that help coordinate disaster relief using the best available information in the most insightful ways. The improved decisions they enable can help mitigate, for example, the impact of droughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, famines and health crises, to save lives and protect communities. In 2023 alone, MapAction has provided data products, volunteer mapping teams or experts to support emergency response, anticipatory action programmes or capacity building in a dozen countries in five continents.

READ ALSO: MapAction continues to strengthen global disaster preparedness in summer of 2023

From response to anticipation

While MapAction’s initial expertise was in support of emergency response, our work is increasingly moving into early warning and preparedness. Anthropogenic climate change has been proven to alter both the likelihood and the severity of extreme weather events around the world, and the growing frequency of these can be predicted, if not precisely then generally. Being ready to spot the indicators, triggering early support for anticipatory action can be life-saving. Predictive analytics can allow us to define the mechanisms that trigger these actions by analysing current and historical data and developing models, as long as the data is reliable.

READ ALSO: Why we must address the gender gap in humanitarian data

“It is more important than ever to be able to respond effectively to such events, but also to be able to anticipate them, in order to more effectively mitigate their impact,” Daniele Castellana, former lead Data Scientist at MapAction, commented before CoP27. “Through our collaborations with the Centre for Humanitarian Data and the Start Network, MapAction has been working on this flourishing component of humanitarian aid.” MapAction launched its own InnovationHub in 2022.

READ ALSO: MapAction Data Science Lab: the story so far

Early action is one of the most effective ways to address the ever-growing climate impacts. That is why MapAction has partnered with the START Network, a coalition that focuses on humanitarian action through innovation, fast funding and early action; Insurance Development Forum is also a partner in this work. START Network brings together 55 international non-governmental organisations and 7,000 partners worldwide. MapAction is also working with INFORM to support updating forecast and risk models with select national disaster management agencies worldwide.

READ ALSO: 7 Country Missions Completed Successfully as Part of Phase 1 Programme for Anticipatory Action and Disaster Risk Reduction

From commitment to action

MapAction has made concrete commitments to actively seek solutions to reduce the impact of climate change. In October 2021, we signed the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organisations. The charter was developed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and guided by a 19-person strong Advisory Committee which included representatives of local, national and international NGOs, UN agencies and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as well as academics, researchers and experts in the humanitarian, development, climate and environmental fields.

Signing that charter commits us to being a part of the solution and helping people adapt to a changing climate and environment. It will also help strengthen our own resolve and efforts to be environmentally sustainable. Most of all, it recognises that our efforts must be a collective endeavour – no organisation can tackle this alone.

Together with a growing range of partners, looking to engage ever more locally, we are using geospatial data, data visualization and data science to start laying the groundwork for climate resilience. The objective is to improve preventive actions and strategies in humanitarian response. 

Because what we map today we can mitigate tomorrow and in the future. That is why the science of how we source, analyze, shape, share and deploy data must be at the heart of all current and future discussions on adapting to climate change. 

For more info on MapAction’s work, please drop by our website

You can also follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram

If you haven’t yet done so, please do subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates on our work. 

A version of this article was first published before CoP27 in Egypt in 2022. It was updated for CoP28 in November 2023.

Ode to a geospatial humanitarian partnership and shared values

From Mexico to South Sudan, Malawi and worldwide, MapAction and CartONG have worked together for nearly a decade to bring geospatial solutions to the humanitarian aid and international development sector. Our underlying core shared values help us support NGOs and aid actors for more impactful assistance.

Image: CartONG.

What happens if information barriers aren’t broken down for humanitarian agencies in emergencies? Food gets sent to the wrong people, search and rescue teams are misinformed, temporary settlements are set up in misguided places. Lives are lost or ruined because the right data was missing.

Breaking down information barriers

At MapAction and CartONG we embrace and live by the same values embedded in a single idea: the application of geospatial technology to improve the quality and impact of humanitarian assistance and development projects. Every map, mapathon, training event, data analysis tool or geospatial element of disaster preparedness we co-strive to create can be the key to getting aid to a stricken community or to understanding and preparing for the worst effects of a drought, flood or health emergency. These shared core values and resources have led to a beautiful cross-channel partnership between UK-based MapAction and France-based CartONG. A partnership that aims to improve the impact of aid actions by providing decision-makers and vulnerable communities with the right data to understand and mitigate any crisis.

Decade-long partnership

Our partnership has already lasted nearly a decade. As part of the Covid-19 response, MapAction seconded staff to help CartONG with the surge of activities in its partnership with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). Having already worked together for several years on various projects, including as part of the H2H Network, a peer-to-peer humanitarian network, MapAction and CartONG signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work more closely together in 2020.

READ ALSO: MapAction strengthens partnership with CartONG

READ MORE: CartONG strengthens collaboration with MapAction via the signing of a MoU

CartONG and MapAction have since worked together on a number of different projects. In Mexico, together with UNICEF and the Mexican government, MapAction and CartONG supported the creation of a dashboard aiming to display and monitor real-time information on key education indicators on elementary schools at the national level in order to map COVID-19 affectations before the start of the new school year in 2020. It was created to display and monitor real-time information on key education indicators for all elementary schools. This relied on over 200,000 individual schools uploading their data on a daily basis, and was the first time that this information would be collected and displayed at a national level.

Screenshot from a dashboard on the Mexico project. Image: Screenshot/UNICEF.

READ ALSO: Developing an analytic dashboard for back to school follow-up in Mexico with MapAction

READ MORE: Post-COVID Progress: Helping Mexican schools reopen

In South Sudan, MapAction and CartONG, together with other partners, worked to  identify the data challenges that might slow down ‘final mile’ vaccine delivery in a challenging data environment. One outcome of this work was the Integrated Humanitarian Data Package, that aimed to give quick and easy access to key geographic data that underpins the planning and delivery of vaccination programmes. This pilot health project highlighted the vital role that geospatial technology can play in creating effective healthcare solutions. High quality mapping and data analysis is key to understanding how many people need vaccinating, where they are, and how and where the vaccines can be safely stored and delivered.

READ ALSO: South Sudan data package to support effective and equitable Covid vaccine delivery

In 2023, CartONG and MapAction again used the IHDP to map the outbreak of cholera in Malawi. We are also both partners on the ‘UNICEF Geospatial Hotline’, where interested UN departments can request specific geospatial services from our organisations.

As we look ahead, we know the crises we try to mitigate will become evermore complex and challenging; the funding landscape evermore volatile. That is why our partnership continues to grow and why the alliances we are building with organisations like H2H, UNICEF and Start Network are so vital. We will soon also be announcing a new and exciting joint-project linked to health in West Africa. More on that soon.

We both remain committed to continue to deliver capacity building events and projects worldwide to strengthen disaster preparedness and improve the impact of humanitarian assistance.

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Updates: The Anticipation Hub, The 11th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action

Welcome to the first post in a new blog series on anticipatory action. The series will explore MapAction’s work to strengthen readiness and preparedness worldwide. We’ll kick off with a few facts and definitions, as well as a review of some of the key sessions and agenda points from the The Anticipation Hub: The 11th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action, which is currently underway in Germany’s capital Berlin. This blog is part of an anticipatory action programme by MapAction kindly supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Insurance Development Forum.

What does this blog cover?

  • Summaries, notes, images, cartoons and observations from the The 11th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action
  • Anticipatory action: definition, components, facts and overview
  • Examples of MapAction’s work in anticipatory action

The 11th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action is currently live from Berlin! Register here to watch it. Listen in as disaster management experts from across the world discuss the latest vanguard thinking on how to mitigate climate change and weather-related hazards.

October 12th. 09:10 UTC

Delegates share their learnings while taking hits at a piñata!

October 12th. 07:50 UTC

Guten Morgen. Here are some highlights to look forward to today, the final day of the The 11th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Action taking place in Berlin.

October 12th. 07:30 UTC

The Berlin Festival of Lights, which sees important landmarks in the German capital illuminated in technicolour, is also underway in Germany’s capital.

October 11th. 15:05 UTC

Heading into the final Day Two sessions now. With that, we’ll be wrapping up our Anticipation Hub blog today. We will add brief summaries and the odd pic tomorrow.

We’ll leave you with the excellent selection of anticipatory action cartoons to wind down with. Bis Morgen!

October 11th. 13:25 UTC

The Data Guardian Game for anticipatory action: a workshop on availability of data in anticipatory action.

“A useful tool to help participants grasp the significance of data in the decision-making process.”

Luke Caley from IFRC outlines the organisation’s database “with 100 years of disasters to learn from”.

“Global data needs to be verified on the ground”. Now the game begins.

Participants are divided into four groups, assuming the roles of government decision-makers. Each group is tasked with investing in various governmental agencies to enhance their data collection and analysis capabilities.

In the second stage of the game, a flood scenario is introduced, prompting participants to gather information exclusively from the agencies in which they had initially invested; they are only permitted to access data and information from these specific agencies. Armed with this information, the groups then proceeded to make crucial judgments regarding the activation of an early action protocol.

MapAction and anticipatory action

MapAction’s work in anticipatory action is kindly supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Insurance Development Forum, as well as other individual and institutional donors. Our work in anticipatory action takes on different shapes and forms from territory to territory and is correlated to disaster risk reduction initiatives worldwide. The list below is non-exhaustive and is designed to give a brief overview of MapAction anticipatory humanitarian action work.

In Kenya we work with Oxfam and the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) Humanitarian Network to forecast and map the potential impacts of drought on northern counties. “The Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL), in Kenya cover close to 80% of the land and are home to approximately 36% of the country’s population, 70% of the national livestock and 90% of the wildlife,” states ASAL’s website. “The residents of the ASALs earn their living through a mix of pastoralism and agriculture. However, pastoralism is the main source of livelihood contributing to 13% to the GDP of Kenya and further plays a vital role in both the economic and socio-cultural development of the resident communities.” Recent droughts over the last five years have left CSOs and the communities they work with in the northern Kenyan counties of Isiolo, Kwale, Marsabit, Nyeri, Kitui and Taita Taveta more vulnerable. MapAction’s aim with this work is to increase the visibility of the work CSOs are doing in humanitarian action and to help them leverage their forecasts to release early funding and create resilience against future hazards for local residents. MapAction’s support focused on mapping at county and even ward-level, a more localised administrative unit, ensuring CSOs can integrate GIS and IM into their disaster management tools .

Start Network is another key partner for MapAction. In the last few months alone, MapAction volunteers have delivered resilience-building seminars and events for local disaster managers in Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Senegal and Madagascar.

READ ALSO: MapAction continues to strengthen global disaster preparedness in summer of 2023

Some of the most important work MapAction does under the umbrella of anticipatory action is through the INFORM network, the “multi-stakeholder forum for developing shared, quantitative analysis relevant to humanitarian crises and disasters.” MapAction works with several national and subnational disaster management agencies worldwide through this framework, including ongoing projects to build or upgrade national disaster models in Eswatini and Niger.

October 11th. 13:10 UTC/15:10 CEST: MapAction Chair of Trustees Nick Moody is talking next on a panel in his role as coordinator of the Global Risk Modelling Alliance (GRMA). Nick shared his thoughts briefly on MapAction’s role through the prism of anticipatory action when we caught up with him in Berlin.

“There is evidence here of real momentum towards managing risk, instead of constantly being wrong-footed by extreme events when they happen. Baseline risk assessment – necessary for pre-arranging crisis finance – is constantly improving, and forecasting is good enough to make operational decisions ahead of the impact of an imminent flood, cyclone or drought. MapAction is helping to drive this momentum, particularly in working side by side with local CSOs and NGOs in developing these critical new capabilities.”

Chair of Trustees at MapAction Nick Moody

The Global Shield and its relevance to anticipatory action

The Global Shield against Climate Risk is a new initiative to avert, minimize and address climate-related losses and damages by scaling up climate and disaster-risk financing instruments, coupled with social protection mechanisms and early warning systems. The initiative was launched at last year’s UN Climate Conference, building on a joint effort by the G7 and the Vulnerable 20 Group (V20). 

This workshop will introduce the aims and structure of the Global Shield, including how the Global Shield Solutions Platform and the Global Shield Financing Facility can both provide support for climate- and disaster-risk financing instruments, including anticipatory action approaches; it will also explore the role of the anticipatory action community. 

Register for or watch the workshop here. Starts at: 13.15 UTC/15:15 CEST.

Moderators

  • Jonathan Auer, Junior Advisor, Global Shield Secretariat
  • Lea Sarah Kulick, Advisor, Secretariat of the Global Shield against Climate Risks

Speaker

  • Lorraine Njue, Head of Actuarial, ARC Ltd
  • Nick Moody, Cooordinator, Global Risk Modelling Alliance (GRMA)
  • Kaavya Ashok Krishna, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, World Bank / Global Shield Financing Facility
  • Annette Detken , Head of the Global Shield Solution Platform , Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
  • Kip Koskei , Director of Strategic Partnerships , Insurance Development Forum
  • Emily Montier, Consultant, World Bank

New countries can apply for support from the Global Shield at CoP28.

Register here to join virtually.

October 11th. 11:00 UTC

Break in plenary session at the #GlobalDP. Back this afternoon. Here are some other things to think about during the break. We’ll be back to wrap things up this afternoon.

  1. Volunteer with MapAction to work on anticipatory action projects!

A lot of the work MapAction does in anticipatory action (with the Start Network and INFORM) involves our volunteer cohort of 70+ GIS and IM specialists. We are currently recruiting for six new exciting volunteer positions. Read on here to find out more about volunteering with MapAction.

Find out more about the volunteer community of practice at MapAction here.

  • 2. Check out this UN video on role of data in AI in building resilience

INTERESTING RESOURCE (from the UN): Reimagining Tomorrow: Breakthrough in Data and AI for a More Resilient World

“Step into the future with the UN-hosted Complex Risk Analytics Fund, the Early Warnings for All initiative and Gzero Media at the 78th United Nations (UN) General Assembly. As we navigate an era of multifaceted global crises – amplified by climate change – recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), technologies, and data ecosystems create transformative opportunities to tackle these challenges. Together with global leaders and change-makers, we envisage a world where global partners unlock the potential of data, analytics, and AI to better anticipate crises and pave the way for a more sustainable and resilient future.”

October 10th. 15:30 UTC

A cartoon to wrap things up for today. More updates tomorrow.

“And if there’s ever a question of whose responsibility something is, simply CC everyone.”

Day 1 wraps up with lightning talks, in which a CSO leader and an academic explore how El Niño is affecting lives, health, food security, violence and displacement of children and adolescents.

With:

  • Wendy Emilia Vera García, Leader, Movimiento Por Ser Niña (‘Because I am a Girl’ movement) 
  • Liz Stephens, Science Lead / Professor of Climate Risks and Resilience, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and University of Reading

Anticipatory action (AA) is a humanitarian term. We will use the Red Cross definition below:

“A set of actions taken to prevent or mitigate potential disaster impacts before a shock or before acute impacts are felt. The actions are carried out in anticipation of a hazard impact and based on a prediction of how the event will unfold. Anticipatory actions should not be a substitute for longer-term investment in risk reduction and should aim to strengthen people’s capacity to manage risks.”

World Disaster Report 2020, IFRC

The language of AA

The following are not synonymous with anticipatory action but are closely interconnected terms: early action, early warning, disaster risk reduction, future preparedness, disaster resilience, forecast-based action, forecast-based finance.

Why is anticipatory action necessary?

  • In the last 10 years… 410,000 people have been killed by extreme weather and climate-related events, most by heatwaves and storms. (World Disaster Report 2020)
  • In the last 10 years… 83% of all disasters were caused by extreme weather and climate-related events
  • There has been a 35% increase in climate and weather-related hazards since 1990
  • The East Asia and Pacific region alone includes 13 of the 30 countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to the World Bank. “Without concerted action, the region could see an additional 7.5 million people fall into poverty due to climate impacts by 2030,” warns the international financial institution. 
What can we learn from acrobats in anticipatory action? Trust, practice, learning from mistakes. Photo: MapAction.

Anticipatory action networks

MapAction volunteers attended training with INFORM in Italy in September 2023. MapAction will be working with several national disaster management agencies to build new disaster models or to update their current ones within the INFORM framework. Goal? Greater resilience. Photo: Leon Baruah.

MapAction is part of the following anticipatory action frameworks and networks:

  • INFORM: INFORM is a multi-stakeholder forum for developing shared, quantitative analysis relevant to humanitarian crises and disasters. INFORM includes organisations from across the multilateral system, including the humanitarian and development sector, donors, and technical partners. The Joint Research Center of European Commission is the scientific lead for INFORM. INFORM is developing a suite of quantitative, analytical products to support decision-making on humanitarian crises and disasters. These help make decisions at different stages of the disaster management cycle, specifically climate adaptation and disaster prevention, preparedness and response.

“The partnership between INFORM and MapAction greatly increases our capacity to support countries to develop INFORM Subnational risk models. These models help countries understand their risks and inform planning and programming to better prevent and prepare for crises and disasters.”

Andrew Thow, INFORM Programme Manager
  • Start Network: Start Network is made up of more than 80 non-governmental organisations across five continents, ranging from large international organisations to local and national NGOs. Our programmes allow members to deliver humanitarian action around the world.

Anticipatory action allows communities exposed to hazards, as well as disaster managers, to be more prepared and forecast future hazards. It is a framework for disaster risk reduction and for triggering early release of funds to mitigate the effects of hazards.

These four phases are regularly used components within an anticipatory action plan.

  1. TRIGGERS: Defines when and where early action will be implemented.
  2. EARLY ACTIONS: Defines what early actions will be taken to reduce the impact
  3. FINANCING MECHANISM: a pre-agreed financing mechanism
  4. DELIVERY: Capacity to implement actions as planned

Images from the Anticipation Hub in Berlin, where a team of MapAction anticipatory action specialists – project managers, data scientists, software engineers – are in attendance. Photo: MapAction.

There are also three agreed parameters for anticipatory action:

What? The action is taken to reduce or prevent the crisis impact

When? The action is taken ahead of the hazard impact or before the impacts of the shock fully unfold (not to be confused with early response) 

How? The decision to act is taken on a forecast or a collaborative analysis