Beyond Data Portals; Using social cascades and remote sensing to support humanitarian weather risk management operations

Keywords: Weather risk, humanitarian, mixed methods, remote sensing, qualitative, Africa, Somalia
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 18

Abstract

Accurate weather information is critical in supporting effective humanitarian action to mitigate and prevent disasters; however, to be truly actionable, it must be built upon a nuanced understanding of the processes of disaster development. Equally, there is currently an overwhelming array of weather analyses available to humanitarian professionals. Knowing which product to act upon can be an exceptionally difficult task in a region such as Somalia, with high stakes for failure, an unstable humanitarian caseload and limited opportunities for ground based validation.

In our industry funded research, we apply a parallel mixed methods approach to assess humanitarian specific weather risk factors across Somalia, building on the theoretical frameworks of social cascades, disaster risk creation and livelihood informed meteorology. Semi-structured interviews with humanitarian and local actors were used to assess how factors related to social inequities, livelihoods and socio-political institutions, can develop over a region’s history to condition coping mechanisms or the impacts of weather hazards. Information was also gathered on the perceptions of historical disaster causal chains and their intersections with humanitarian action. The narratives and historical perceptions of weather risk were illustrated using a range of satellite weather analyses, allowing a qualitative assessment of product skill in an area of extremely limited ground-based data. Finally, the information was integrated into a suite of tailored remotely sensed weather statistics designed to operationally support humanitarian professionals in Somalia, or lead to a new generation of parametric weather risk tools.