Geo-powering cities to assess risk, increase resilience and reduce vulnerability: Establishing an ecosystem approach

use · risk assessment · early warning · landslide

Workshop Summary:The urban data revolution is underway. Over the last decade, cities have been offered unprecedented opportunities to mobilize geospatial data to enhance livability and reduce vulnerability through risk-informed decision making. Data, especially geospatial data, is helping local governments prioritize investments to build resilient cities and boost sustainable development. But truly geo-powering cities involves not only the use of geospatial data but ensuring that data turns into information and decision makers have the capacity and tools to make evidence-based decisions. This requires moving away from sectoral egos towards an ecosystem approach where identification of risks and solutions is done in a collaborative manner; and innovation, technology, capacity, and regulation work together to establish a robust, mutually reinforcing system.  Such an approach is being promoted by the World Bank’s City Planning Labs (CPL) to geo-power client governments through Municipal Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI). MSDI is operationalized under four inter-connected pillars: Institutional Arrangements, People, Data and Systems, or IPDS in short. Diagnostics, tools and regulatory processes are embedded within each of these four pillars that work together to ensure systematic information flows and effective use of geospatial intelligence for risk assessment, prevention and mitigation by increasing the ability of local governments to prioritize actions. Participants will learn how MSDI’s four pillar framework (i.e. IPDS) and its associated tools offers a unique solution for institutionalizing resilient urban planning and management though enhanced inter-agency collaboration, robust data foundations, cutting edge risks analytical tools and digital platforms developed under CPL. The model has been developed and successfully tested for local government relevance and application.Implementing MSDI requires an important mindset shift: to think of data as infrastructure. The workshop will systematically lead the participants through this mindset shift by demonstrating parallels with infrastructure elements across each four pillars of the MSDI framework through powerful analogies that will be backed up by practical toolkits participants can immediately implement within their contexts after the workshop. Looking ahead, the workshop will kick-off a virtual international MSDI network of geospatial practitioners, firms and government representatives as champions and pioneers of MSDI. Audience: Priority will be given to World Bank city delegations and task team leaders participating in UR 2020. A limited number of slots will be open to other participants. Format of the workshop: The proposed interactive workshop will take place over two days. Participants will engage with the content of MSDI’s four pillars and learn about the range of available risks diagnostics, tools and manuals, while simultaneously experiencing simulated collaborative working exercises. Exercises and activities will apply creative approaches, including use of technology. The workshop will be supported by international experts from Singapore, Finland, Mexico and Indonesia (among others) who will use a practical, hands-on approach during the workshop to engage with real-life problems posed by the participants. Day 1 – Exploring MSDI What does it mean to implement Municipal Spatial Data Infrastructure in a city? What are the advantages and why cities should invest in this approach? Day one of this workshop answers these questions by engaging with participant experiences of utilizing geospatial data and connect to MSDI as an effective framework for institutionalizing evidence-driven, risk-informed decision making. Participants explore how this ecosystem approach integrates technology, innovation, regulatory structures and human capital to implement long-term, risk-informed and resilient solutions.This first day will start by building a collaborative environment. The main topics are 1) Why MSDI? 2) MSDI and the mind shift to an Ecosystem Approach, 3) Exploring the Four pillars: Institutions, People, Data, and Systems, 4) MSDI as an instrument for inter-sectoral collaboration, and 5) MSDI’s key role in risk assessment, prevention and adapting to disasters.Day 2 – Jump-starting MSDINow aware of MSDI and its benefits, how should cities get started? Day two takes participants through the development of an MSDI roadmap that mainstreams addressing specific local risks. In addition, Day 2 also focuses on CPL’s unique digital platform that combines the power of three Urban Planning Tools – Land Suitability, Urban Performance and CollabMap – along with a state-of-the-art, agile, open source Integrated Data Platform (a Geoportal capable of handling spatial and non-spatial data). In a collaborative setting, participants will learn, through hands-on activities, how this modular approach allows practitioners to adapt CPL’s tools and products to assess risks in different contexts. The products (including source code etc.) will be available for all participants to be used and adapted in their contexts.The second day of the workshop consists of five sessions. The main topics are 1) Jumpstarting MSDI 2) Developing an MSDI roadmap 3) Deep dive on Institutions and System (including Tools) pillars 4) Exploring an Integrated Data platform (IDP) and Urban Planning Tools that allow cutting-edge analytics including risk assessing, evidence-based spatial planning, and service delivery. Participants’ experiences are central to the workshop. They interact with CPL and partner city experts to learn about the relevance of regulatory and technological innovations and how they go hand in hand. Throughout the interventions, speakers from Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Finland, Indonesia’s National Geospatial Agency (BIG), and Mexico will be engaging in structured discussions.

This event will provide an overview of landslide early warning systems from both a technical and operational/practical perspective, drawing on experiences and knowledge across the globe and case studies of Nepal and India from the Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience programme (SHEAR). Both slope and regional scale landslide early warning systems will be covered in a marketplace format to encourage discussions and tailored sharing of knowledge aligned with participants’ interests and needs. The essential value of a combined approach across physical science, social science and practitioners will be emphasised in order to achieve an operational, sustainable system.

The event will also test launch a new guidance resource for setting up and implementing landslide early warning systems, getting feedback from the participants to ensure the guide provides appropriate and comprehensive information for stakeholders embarking on landslide early warning.

Organizer: City Planning Labs (CPL)

Partner Organizations: Singapore Land Authority

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Disrupting the status quo: Brigade of youth and young professionals in DRR

use · Infrastructure · Youth and young professionals

Disaster risks are systemic in nature and thus actions towards its reduction and management require trans-disciplinary intervention, ensuring that the whole of society is involved and no one is left behind. Building on the quality of youth and young professionals (YYPs) to think out of the box and disrupt the status quo, the event will present a hypothetical problem statement, derived from the pertinent issues in the countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region, focussing on the least developed countries (LDCs).

The problem statement will be devised by a working committee comprising of members coming from organisations mentioned above. Through a fair selection process based on the expression of interests received from YYPs of LDCs in SAARC region, 3 participants from each of such countries countries (15 in all) will be invited to attend the event where they would be put into multi-disciplinary groups and urged to work on solutions for straight 12 hours and then present them. The winning team will receive accolades but the overall solutions presented by all the teams would be documented and presented as “You Inspire“, focussing on the possibility of replicating it in nations with similar issues based on the leanness and agility of the solutions. Thus, not only science, engineering, technology and innovation, but also a lot of policy-level recommendations and suggestions can be expected.

Organizer: Confederation of Risk Reduction Professionals (CRRP)

Partner organization: U-Inspire Alliance (Afghanistan, Nepal), Youth movements in Bangladesh and Bhutan, SAARC Disaster Management Centre (IU), IRDR Centre of Excellence, UNESCO India, Avoidable Deaths Network

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Cooler cities: Action to reduce extreme urban heat risk

use · risk finance · heatwave

Cities are at once our greatest opportunity and our greatest risk and extreme heat is one of the deadliest global hazards. With 18 of the 19 hottest years on record occurring since 2001, climate change science suggests that temperatures will continue to rise. Carbon emissions, unplanned growth, poor land-use decisions, environmental degradation, impervious surfaces, and migration to cities are compounding vulnerability. In urban areas, where heat island effects occur, localized temperatures today can reach 2-7 degrees higher than in adjacent areas. Exposure to heat hazards, a silent killer, is particularly high among the estimated 1.5 billion people living in slums worldwide, communities that have fewer resources and coping mechanisms – such as education and social cohesion – to reduce their exposure to heat. The purpose of this Focus Day event will be to explore early strides towards a risk and finance facility to address extreme heat.

Organizer: Global Resilient Cities Network

Partner Organizations: Arsht – Rockefeller Foundation Center for Resilience, Red Cross, City of Chennai, SwissRE, CCRIF

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Identifying the vulnerable and helping them build resilience

Showcasing, demonstrating and launching a tool-kit

Disasters play an important role in preventing households from moving out of poverty and in pulling back into poverty households that were able to escape. Research exploring the link between poverty and disaster risk has helped inform policies to increasingly consider the vulnerable, in addition to the chronically poor. In several countries, this research has helped inform the development of adaptable social protection systems to prevent people from falling into poverty. However, a challenge has been to identify those that are most likely to suffer and least likely to recover from disasters, especially in data poor environments. With a better understanding of who and where the vulnerable are, and the benefit of protecting them, post-disaster responses can be designed and targeted to minimize the acute and long-term impacts of shocks. This session will provide an overview of research that contributes to the understanding of disaster risk and vulnerability to poverty, and the benefits of risk-informed development policies. Participants will learn about tools that have been applied in several countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia/Pacific, and South Asia regions to identify the vulnerable, inform ex-ante targeting criteria, and measure the benefits of post-disaster support, particularly adaptive social protection systems.

Organizer: World Bank

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Micro Vulnerabilities; Macro Risks: Risk, resilience and reform at ministries of finance

The combination of a new generation of risks and rapidly evolving capabilities is taking the work of ministries of finance in new directions. Health scares, entrenched pockets of poverty and social marginalization, and climate-change exposures are all putting pressure on budgets and amplifying the focus on fiscal risk. As a variety of digital technology disruptions ripple through the economy, are ministries of finance equipped with fit for purpose intelligence, or paper tigers themselves vulnerable to risk and disruption. Within a few years, two thirds of the world’s public sectors will be on accrual accounting, according to the International Federation of Accountants. Technologies are allowing MOFs to isolate sources of risk to intertemporal budget management. While the standard method for dealing with public sector balance sheet risk is from a central portfolio management perspective, the new tools are allowing MOFs to focus down on individual citizens and individual events as specific sources of risk. How are the world’s leading ministries of finance responding; will new technologies and new approaches lead to transformative change in the management of public resources?

Using three illustrative examples – the global COVID-19 virus, poverty and mental health in NZ, and climate change Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region – we will seek to bring fresh perspectives and debates to the challenges for a new generation of ministries of finance. This session will support the following:

• Consider key “technologies” (associated with modern financial management involving balance sheets, accrual accounting, medium term expenditure frameworks, fiscal risk management and disruptive technologies) that are framing the way finance ministries approach emerging intertemporal budget risks
• Highlight the pathway for countries with limited capabilities to adopt more sophisticated approaches, while reinforcing important principles around public financial management

Accounting innovations have been at the heart of informing the management and regulation of corporations.  How prepared are governments with regards to illustrative risks? Three kick-off presentations will draw on approaches that are already in place. These will be followed by a shark tank to stress test if ministries are indeed on top of macro and micro risk management for a new era.

Taking each of these three key challenges:

Managing the virus: Singapore

COVID19 is attacking at its core the ability of the state to provide its part of the social contract. The shock of a highly contagious virus is putting into play concern about public safety. It is sowing doubt on the state’s ability to deliver a sound response and through the trauma and uncertainty, probably leading to reduced economic prospects. Each day companies are announcing downward revisions to their 2020 forecasts. The state is dealing with this by attempting to isolate individual cases, and wherever possible, determining the link between cases. The entire workforce is having its temperature monitored to manage the risk.

Big data shines light on multi-faceted fiscal costs of individuals’ mental illness: New Zealand

People with recent welfare benefit claims, contact with welfare housing, or with a criminal conviction also tend to have low mental health wellbeing and low life satisfaction, and high rates related to various forms of deprivation (low material wellbeing, low housing quality, low job wellbeing). This indicates that there is a relationship between mental health wellbeing and contact with a wide range of government services across different sectors. Managing down rates of mental illness will provide fiscal dividends.

Big data is allowing a more attenuated view of the interaction between individuals and the state, thus allowing ministries of finance to consider the fiscal risks associated with the conditions of individuals. This approach is consistent with the idea that we know where the poor live; we know their names, and that we know where the potholes are; we know how to fill them. The approach, applied in New Zealand, suggests we know who are likely to commit crimes, and what may help them take a different course. But has the mode of government delivery adapted sufficiently to take heed of the ability to inform small actions on a large scale; has accrual accounting made a difference? What are the financial implications of making much heavier use of personal or micro data to inform policy and delivery?

Environmental risk and the Mekong Delta: Vietnam

The thirteen provinces of the low-lying Vietnam Mekong Delta region are increasingly vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea-levels, ground-water salinity, extreme weather hazards, and sprawling urbanization are all leading to increased growing uncertainty in Vietnam’s agricultural rice basket of Vietnam. Towards this end, the national and sub-national authorities are looking to strengthen the prioritization of public investments to tackle adaptation and resilience from a regional perspective.  Can finance authorities tell if proposed investments in resilience are worth the costs?

Organizer: World Bank

Management of OpenStreetMap data and data collection processes for integrated DRM

Showcasing, demonstrating and launching a tool-kit

In this session, HOT will introduce tools and workflows for the use and integration of OpenStreetMap data in a DRM context. We will focus on the use of OSM data in vulnerability and impact analysis of exposure (buildings, roads, and key infrastructure) and hazard data for use cases such as (multi-hazard) risk assessments, preparedness planning, and risk reduction. The session will take the form of a live demonstration, followed by hands-on exercises in identifying and analysing data gaps, and will introduce workflows and concepts for the analysis, creation and management of open geospatial data from OpenStreetMap. Case studies are included from Indonesia and Uganda. Tools included are HOT’s MapCampaigner, Documentation site, InaSAFE, and selected tools such as the Humanitarian Data Exchange. Part of the session will be open discussion & collection of ideas and feedback from the audience. The audience is encouraged to bring a laptop and follow along to analyze and area and data of their interest – and potentially set up their own mapping campaigns!

Organizer: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

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Integrated nature-based solutions (NBS) for urban flood resilience in Singapore

*note: this event is closed

use · nature-based solutions

The objective of this technical workshop is to explore the design and benefits of nature based solutions in the design of stormwater infrastructure in Singapore, as part of the Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme. The session will include site visits to completed ABC Waters project sites that demonstrate solutions which can (1) mitigate storm events, e.g. floodplain design; (2) detain and treat stormwater runoff; and (3) achieve social and environmental benefits.

The session will be co-led by PUB Singapore’s National Water Authority and the World Bank, with about 30 participants from World Bank’s client countries, external practitioners, and decision-makers.

The site visit will be followed by a mini studio exercise for an identified area for participants to have a go at the actual planning and designing  process on a small scale catchment. The studio exercise will allow participants to gain a quick first-hand experience in the technical design process that landscape architects, planners, and engineers undergo in developing integrated nature based drainage infrastructure for climate resilience. The event will close with participants’ presentation of their respective studio projects, reflection on key learning points, and development of a plan for applying the new information and experience in their own projects and day-to-day operations.

Organizer: Urban Floods Community of Practice, World Bank

Partner Organizations: PUB Singapore’s National Water Agency

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Governing risks of emerging technologies in Asia: New approaches to AI, blockchain and precision medicine

use · AI-Machine Learning · Emerging technologies

The workshop brings together thematic experts from diverse backgrounds to share and shape ideas for governing risks of emerging technologies in the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This workshop is motivated by the now widely shared view that emerging technologies pose complex risks that should not be left to the industry. Our discussion will draw on expertise in emerging technologies such as AI, Blockchain, and Precision medicine to develop an integrative research foresight with a focus on identifying emerging risk governance gaps accompanying the 4IR era and new approaches to technology governance in Asia. 

Organizer: KAIST-KPC4IR

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Multiform Flood Risk in a complex future flooded world – Earth Observation and Complex Systems in support of compound floods in rapidly changing environments

use · AI-Machine Learning · Data · Emerging technologies · risk assessment · earth observations · flood

Risk, and particularly flood risk, can be seen as the resultant of difference forces acting on a complex system. Well-accepted and diffused frameworks describes the forces and elements of the system with hazard, exposure and vulnerability, components that are continuously under change over space and time, in many cases rapidly, and whose interactions determines the level of risk.

For an efficient and adaptable risk management, all the elements of this complex system, together with their trajectories and changes, have to be considered for reliable damage estimations and risk analyses, allowing for an effective design of DRR measures and policies.

Nonetheless, we live in a complex world where things often are even more complicated, with compound hazards acting on rapidly urbaning areas, making the description of the forces and the domain where they act extremely difficult: floods can become multiform floods by combining with other types of hazards (e.g. heat-waves) or different types of floods (e.g. riverine with coastal), land use can change from one month to the other (e.g. urban development), society can evolve rapidly (e.g. demography, education, etc.).

How can we inform DRR measures and policies in such a complex world?

New sources of data–Earth Observation, social media and mobility data–are becoming important to describe this complex system, and new tools–machine learning and AI, complex systems analysis and socio-hydrology–are supporting their analysis. Nonetheless, where hazards hit, things can be far from ideal.

This session wants to investigate what are the new trends in data, tools and practices related to multiform floods in a rapidly changing environments, involving experts of data production, of tools development and of DRM in the field. We propose to have a panel of experts in different fields (socio-hydrology, complex systems, artificial intelligence, design, space technology, socia media) with a diverse cultural background, taking into account their country of origin (in order to represent the global environment of UR) and gender balance.

Organizer: World Bank Group

Partner Organizations: International Research Institute of Climate and Society, Columbia University

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