Implementing real-time disaster risk models: Collaborations across government, non-profits, academia and private sector in Mozambique and the Bahamas
Organizer: Direct Relief, Facebook Data for Good, Pacific Disaster Center, Harvard School of Public Health
| During the response to Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique, and Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas, new collaborations emerged to support response activities in real-time through modeling of key risks. Direct Relief, Facebook’s Data for Good team, Nethope, Harvard School of Public Health, World Health Organization, Pacific Disaster Center, and the governments of the respective affected countries combined efforts to model the spread of infectious diseases like cholera, displacement of population and loss of communications, in support of a range of response operations. These partnerships proved essential to the emerging capacity of predictive modeling to play an immediate practical role in response to emergencies by determining precise informational needs, framing key questions in pragmatic ways, supporting government capacities with access to spatial informatics, expanding rapid access to relevant data at appropriate scales, quickly employing academic and private sector expertise, and translating model outputs between implementers and researchers. This workshop will look at the modeling and response partnerships which occurred between the events in Mozambique and The Bahamas in order to build upon these efforts for the sake of improved real-time integration of predictive modeling at early stages of disasters. |
Speakers:
Andrew Schroeder, VP of Research and Analysis
Alex Pompe, Research Manager – Data for Good
Rebecca Kahn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Erin Hughey, Director of Global Operations