BACKGROUND
Founded in July 2010, the mission of the GFDRR Labs is to use science, technology, and innovation to better empower decision-makers in the developing world to increase their resilience to disasters in a changing climate.
The Labs strategy is to build partnerships and communities that utilize open data and open source technology to assist decision-making. Labs activities are designed and implemented in partnership with the World Bank’s regional Disaster Risk Management teams, which insures that these initiatives are developed to add value in operational environments.
*Note: The Partnership Learning Series (PLS) is a course series within the GFDRR Learning section.
AREAS OF ENGAGEMENT
1. Open Data for Resilience: Informing Decision-Making - in order to build resilient societies, policy-makers and the public must have access to the right data and information to inform good decisions. Examples of such decisions include; where and how to build safer schools, how to insure farmers against drought, and how to protect coastal cities against future climate impacts. Sharing data and creating open systems promotes transparency, accountability, and ensures a wide range of actors are able to participate in the challenge of building resilience. The Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI) aims to reduce the impact of disasters by empowering decisions-makers with better information and the tools to support their decisions.
2. Mapping Disasters: The Labs provides real-time mapping support and damage assessment validation through a combination of standard GIS analytics and innovative applications of remote sensing and earth observation products to Sustainable Recovery activities such as the Post-Disaster Damage and Needs Assessment. Past World Bank projects include the Global Earth Observation Catastrophe Assessment Network (GEO-CAN), a community of 600 risk professionals from 23 countries that completed a rapid building-by-building crowd-sourced damage assessment of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, country-wide inundation maps of the 2010 Pakistan Floods derived from satellite imagery, and continuous mapping support for the evolving drought situation this year in Horn of Africa, and many others.
3. The Understanding Risk Community: The UR Community is a global network of experts and practitioners that shares knowledge and experience, collaborate, and discussions on best practice in disaster risk assessment. UR Community members include representatives from government agencies, research institutions, the private sector, multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations and community based organizations. The UR Community site (www.understandrisk.org), convenes over two thousand members representing over 100 countries across the globe. The “State of the Union” of this community, the next UR Forum, will be held in June 2012.
4. Open Development: The Labs partners with civil society and promotes innovation by building non-traditional public and private partnerships. It supports Volunteer Technology Communities (VTC) such as: the Random Hacks of Kindness initiative (www.rhok.org) - a global community of innovation building practical open technology to solve development problems, the International Network of Crisis Mappers, the Crisis Commons, Civil Society 2.0, and others.
5. Regional Technical Assistance: The Labs team supports ongoing risk assessment projects, while building towards an open framework for technical interoperability amongst GFDRR projects, World Bank projects, and similar international efforts. Examples of ongoing projects include: Urban Resilience Risk-in-a-Box investment tool in East Asia, the Central America Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) initiative, and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (PCRAFI).
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Stuart Gill
+1 202 458 0859
sgill@worldbank.org
