Humanitarian Response
A new approach
Ecosophy’s platform represents a ground-breaking approach that combines short, medium and long-term meteorological, and climate forecasts. Using indicators and thresholds developed by the WMO, as well as additional indicators tailored to the needs of humanitarian Clusters and individual agencies, Ecosophy has developed a system that includes both short-term alerts that act as an evidence base for forecast-based action, as well as medium- and long-term forecasts that inform preparedness policies. Automating these data processes saves valuable time, and provides humanitarian actors with easy access to state-of-the-art forecast models. This facilitates the more efficient use of resources, and more precise identification of key activities with the aim of reducing human suffering and disaster-related losses.
Forecast-based action
Climate-related and geophysical disasters killed 1.3 million people, and left 4.4 billion people in need of emergency assistance in the 20 years between 1998 and 2017. The World Bank calculates that disasters cost the global economy US$ 520 billion annually, and push 26 million people into poverty each year. The majority of these disaster events are caused by floods, storms, droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather events.
Global climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather and climate events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and stronger storms. Humanitarian agencies will be called upon to respond to increasingly frequent and severe weather and climate-related disasters. To keep pace with the changing nature of disasters, to save lives, and use resources more efficiently, disaster managers will need to invest more in preparedness, early warning, and vulnerability reduction, rather than focusing primarily on response.
Till now, humanitarian planning has been based on a time scale of days, months or years. However, in the context of climate change, disaster managers need to monitor forecasts to prepare for shorter-term impacts associated with longer-term changes. The humanitarian sector has started to shift towards developing forecast-based action capacity in recent years. This includes the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) coordinating with national meteorological agencies to develop a comprehensive list of disaster risk indicators and associated threshold indicators.
