The recent movement of almost 700,000 rohingya from myanmar to bangladesh, settling in areas of increased risk of disaster impacts, is creating the fastest growing refugee crisis globally. June…

The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York has been awarded a $102,697.70 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to enhance decision-maker capacity in assessing disaster risk related to the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh. The project aims to develop a decision support prototype web application that leverages Earth observation data and services to inform urgent weather and climate-sensitive decisions as well as longer-term resilience efforts. This work is structured across two parallel work packages - the co-development of the decision support tool, and an analysis of the mechanisms for mainstreaming Earth observations in humanitarian crisis management. The grant is not associated with a set-aside designation.

The recent movement of almost 700,000 rohingya from myanmar to bangladesh, settling in areas of increased risk of disaster impacts, is creating the fastest growing refugee crisis globally. June marks the climatological start of the monsoon season, triggering the risk of high levels of rainfall, associated geophysical hazards (especially flash floods, riverine floods and landslides), and socioeconomic impact throughout the monsoon season, into the second cyclone season (september-november) and the pre-monsoon and monsoon season of 2019. Action is required now to: 1. Inform urgent and critical decisions made during the monsoon season using higher quality and/or more appropriate geophysical data and information products. 2. Implement a process before the rainy season, where data can be collected now to feed post-monsoon data analysis that will improve preparedness decision making for next monsoon season. Building on recent experiences providing technical support to the international organization for migration (IOM) and to the inter sector coordination group (iscg), we propose to enhance the capacity of decision makers to better assess disaster risk through the use of earth observations, which will directly inform critical and urgent weather and climate-sensitive decisions. Additionally, medium- to long-term decisions framed around building resilience to disasters (i.e., floods and landslides) will be addressed. In turn, we propose to inform the NASA disasters community of lessons learned in connecting and tailoring appropriate earth observation data, model products, and services to targeted decisions required throughout the cycle of humanitarian crisis management. To achieve this, we propose two work packages, designed to be conducted in parallel. Work package 1 consists in enhancing the capacity of decision makers to better assess disaster risk through the CO-development of a decision support prototype web APP, building on the identification of concrete and specific decisions made in the camps by decision makers from IOM, iscg, unhcr and undp. Work package 2 focuses on the analysis of the methods applied in work package 1, in order to deepen the understanding of the mechanisms required to better mainstream earth observations in decision making processes of international organizations in other crises contexts. As sustainability is more likely to be ensured when the governance elements are understood and adhered to, a key element of this work is to understand the institutional processes of the organizations involved in this project by liaising with regional and international levels of users, to explore the current language related to forecast-based action, and assess the capacity and interest for potential shifts. The support described was initially requested by decision makers in the camps, and shaped around their needs. The tools suggested are developed to respond to their specific, concrete and operational decisions, in order to ensure adequate usability of the outputs, and users engagement is continuous throughout all components of the project. Impact will be achieved through enhanced decision maker capacity to better assess disaster risk and take more appropriate preparedness actions, in three ways: 1. Urgent and critical decisions made during the monsoon season will be informed by higher quality and/or more appropriate geophysical data and information products. 2. Medium- and long-term decisions addressing risk reduction for landslides and various types of floods will be identified, and products will be suggested for consideration either as quality-controlled single products, or those that could complement existing products. 3. Long-term policies of the user groups will be influenced. This work will provide an opportunity for the users to rethink their use of geophysical data to make climate-science informed decisions through advocacy and cultural institutional change.