Taking place on Saturday March 2nd is the 9th annual International Open Data Day, a community led event celebrating and promoting free access to information around the world. Are you running or participating in an Open Data Day event? GFDRR is offering you tools and resources to focus on Open Data for Resilience to help… Read more »
Tag: Sharing Data
Measuring the state of global open data for disasters and climate change adaptation
By Pierre Chrzanowski, Open Data Specialist at OpenDRI. Co-author: Grace Doherty, Geospatial Consultant at OpenDRI. A few months ago, OpenDRI released the beta version of the OpenDRI Index, a new tool to track and measure the availability of disaster risk data at country level. Today, we are pleased to publish the Global Datasets page, a preliminary list of worldwide or… Read more »
Checklist: 10 guiding principles for effective use of risk data
OpenDRI has developed 10 principles that can be applied throughout a project’s life cycle to help ensure that risk data is used effectively for decision-making.
Building web maps in Zanzibar
Developers and geospatial professionals from across Africa gathered in Zanzibar for a two-day workshop on using Mapbox tools with open imagery, highlighting what’s spurring geospatial innovation across the continent.
Tool Design for Urban Resilience at the Open Cities Africa Second Regional Meeting
Consortia of local government and innovation teams from 11 cities across the African continent came to Tanzania to learn from each other and attend a packed 7 days of open source software and urban governance conferences in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.
How can Bangladesh increase its resilience to disasters through data sharing?
Schools across Bangladesh are highly vulnerable to floods, cyclones, and earthquakes. How can the country mitigate and respond to the risks of these natural hazards? By using the GeoDASH platform – a geospatial data sharing platform – the Directorate of Primary Education of Bangladesh has assessed 35,000 schools with respect to the type of infrastructure, water… Read more »
Open Cities Africa
Creating open spatial data on the built and natural environment, developing tools to assist key stakeholders to utilize risk information, and supporting local capacity-building necessary for implementing urban resilience interventions.
OpenDRI at UR2018
The OpenDRI team is headed to the 2018 Understanding Risk Forum in Mexico City! We’re looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues in the community, and the schedule is overflowing with exciting sessions on open risk data, civic technology, citizen science, and risk communication.
How Afghanistan uses GeoNode to build resilience
Very little information on hazards and risk was available in Afghanistan a few years ago. A team set out to produce information essential to disaster risk management. They developed innovations on top of a standard GeoNode for visualization & cost-benefit analysis, enabling Afghanistan’s planning to incorporate disaster considerations.
Niger
The PGRC-DU is developing state-of-the-art tools to identify flooding hot-spots and evaluate the added value of flood mitigation measures. These tools will lead to better knowledge of flood-exposed assets and people in the city of Niamey.
“When Women Rise, Mountains Move” – Women in Technology and Mapping
At the first African State of the Map Conference, women spoke about compiling code, making maps and breaking cultural barriers.
Promoting Awareness of OpenStreetMap in Sri Lanka
To date, OpenDRI has engaged effectively with the public sector pushing for adoption of OSM. However, there is still a major gap in engagement with local businesses and tech start-ups that would expand and deepen OSM use and knowledge.
Introduction to OpenDRI E-Learning Course
This short, self-paced e-learning course provides an overview of the approach and toolset developed by the Open Data for Resilience Initiative.
GeoNode Summit 2016
The 2016 GeoNode Summit was the largest gathering to date of developers and users of the popular geospatial data sharing software GeoNode.
OpenDRI Partners with JICA on Training for Flood Mapping in Colombia
In October 2016 OpenDRI hosted a day-long event during JICA’s flood mapping workshop for the National Unit of Disaster Risk Management in Colombia. Technical experts attended the workshop to learn about how open data and open source tools can be used for decision making during a natural disaster event.
The Global Impact of Data: Key Findings from Detailed Case Studies Around the World
The Global Impact of Data, for which OpenDRI’s very own Vivien Deparday was interviewed, by GovLab seeks to explore what we know little about how open data actually works and what forms of impact it is really having.
Uganda
In Uganda, the World Bank is supporting the Government to develop improved access to drought risk related information and quicken the decision of scaling up disaster risk financing (DRF) mechanisms.
Understanding Risk and Finance Conference
The Understanding Risk and Finance Conference (URf), held on November 17–20, 2015, at the African Union
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, convened 450 disaster risk management experts and practitioners to discuss and
share knowledge on how to mitigate the socioeconomic, fiscal, financial, and physical impacts of disasters in
African nations.
A Glance at the GeoNode
If you’re looking to know more about GeoNode, take a glance at the OpenDRI team created. It gives a basic overview of the tool and briefly explains how and why the platform can be used.
Zanzibar
The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar (RGoZ) seeks to address high vulnerability to disaster losses from cyclones, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis with the support of the World Bank Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI) and Southwest Indian Ocean Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (SWIO RAFI).
OpenDRI Policy Note & Principles
This publication describes the approach taken by the OpenDRI team to design and enact impactful and sustainable projects with our partner organizations and communities.
Pacific Islands: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu
Launched in 2011 PCRAFI is a joint initiative of SOPAC/SPC, World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank with the financial and technical support of more than eight other teams.
Open Data for Resilience Initiative will see you at Understanding Risk 2016!
The OpenDRI team is super excited about UR2016 in Venice! The themes of open data, community participation in risk assessment, and improving risk communications are all hot topics at this event.
Sharing Data Factsheet
The Sharing Data Factsheet takes a brief look at how OpenDRI works with Open Data Platforms.
GeoNode Deployment Guide
This GeoNode Deployment Guide, developed by the OpenDRI team, presents general guidelines on the steps and requirements to deploy a GeoNode.
Sri Lanka
The Disaster Management Centre of Sri Lanka (DMC) has been working with OpenDRI to support evidence-based methods to better plan for, mitigate, and respond to natural disasters.
Upcoming Sri Lankan Disaster Management Centre Fellowship and RiskInfo Launch
In partnership with the Open Data for Resilience Initiative, Code for Resilience awards qualified local applicants three month fellowships to work together on code-based projects that can benefit disaster management in Sri Lanka.
Afghanistan
Afghanistan launched disasterrisk.af, an open data sharing platform for DRM in 2017.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is already a heavy user of open-source software tools; hence, their understanding of the benefits of open data in the geospatial context is significant.
Saint Lucia
GeoNode will also be used for a new Land Use Management digital information system in Saint Lucia.
Jamaica
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative supports the Cariska GeoNode for data sharing in Jamaica.
Serbia
OpenDRI works with Serbia on enhancing open data and using data for disaster preparedness.
Seychelles
The Seychelles are one of the five Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) member states implementing an Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI) under the South West Indian Ocean Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (SWIO RAFI).
Mauritius
An open data sharing platform is in preparation in Mauritius, data review is currently ongoing.
Madagascar
An open data sharing platform is in preparation in Madagascar, data review is currently ongoing.
Vietnam
Working at the national and city scale to establish stronger systems for data management and sharing.
Bangladesh
Mapping is on going in Bangladesh and open data sharing platform has been created for the country. It is soon to be launched officially.
Pakistan
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative supports the DisasterInfo GeoNode for disaster risk management data sharing and use in Pakistan.
Nepal
The World Bank and GFDRR started working in partnership with the Government of Nepal in 2012. The aim was to better understand seismic risk in order to build resilience in the education and health infrastructure of Kathmandu Valley.
Haiti
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative supports the HaitiData GeoNode for disaster risk management.
Guyana
Guyana’s data sharing GeoNode is supported by the Open Data for Resilience Initiative.
Grenada
OpenDRI supports the development of open data practices in Grenada.
Dominica
A GeoNode deployment for sharing existing data launched in November 2012 and a full OpenDRI platform implementation took place in 2013.
Colombia
The OpenDRI team engaged directly with civil society and other international organizations to better understand Colombia’s challenges and their potential to improve resilience to disasters.
Antigua and Barbuda
OpenDRI supports the GeoNode for Antigua and Barbuda.
Belize
The World Bank has provided technical support to Belize’s GeoNode installation, spatial data management related activities, and data/metadata quality assurance and control.
Bolivia
In Bolivia, OpenDRI applies the concepts of the global open data movement to the challenges of reducing vulnerability to natural hazards and the impacts of climate change.
Kyrgyz Republic
Key stakeholders like the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MoES), have identified the critical need to improve the mechanism for collection, management, and dissemination of disaster risk data in Kyrgyzstan.
Philippines
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative assisted in Typhoon Yolanda relief by supporting a GeoNode specific to the event.
Mozambique
Mozambique’s national disaster management agency, The Instituto Nacional de Gestão das Calamidades (INGC), in collaboration with the World Bank and the GFDRR, has developed a sustainable OpenDRI work plan currently under implementation.
Comoros
An open data sharing platform is in preparation in the Comoros, data review is currently ongoing.
Malawi
The Government of Malawi (GoM) with the support of the World Bank has been developing the Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI) with the aim of supporting evidence-based and innovative solutions to better plan, mitigate, and prepare for natural disasters and particularly for the damaging floods that occur yearly.
Battling Ebola in Sierra Leone: Data Sharing to Improve Crisis Response
In 2014, the largest Ebola outbreak in history occurred in West Africa. A number of data-driven initiatives sought to improve the quality of information available to humanitarians working to address the crisis, including the Ebola GeoNode that OpenDRI worked on deploying.
Armenia
The World Bank Group is offering support to further advance disaster resilience in the country by launching the Armenia National Disaster Risk Management Program. The OpenDRI team is just starting to support programs in Armenia.
The Digital Divide: a challenge to overcome in tackling climate change
Try to imagine a world without the Internet.
Impossible, isn’t it?
Over the past 25 years, the Internet has become the nervous system of our society, interconnecting all the different parts of our everyday lives. Our social interactions, ways of doing business, traveling and countless other activities are supported and governed by this technology.
At this very moment, just over three billion people are connected to the Internet, 105 billion emails are being sent, two million blog posts have just been written (including this one) and YouTube has collected four billion views. These numbers give you a glimpse of the extent to which humanity is intimately and deeply dependent on this technology.
The digital revolution has changed the daily lives of billions of people. But what about the billions who have been left out of this technological revolution?
Project NOAH launches New DRRM Online Platform
Project NOAH officially launched its new disaster risk reduction and management online platform on 11 December 2015. New innovations and features were added to the platform to enhance the existing disaster information and management system. The information and improved tools included in the platform can be used in terms of planning against and preparing for disasters…
We Need Open Data to Fight Climate Change
“We’re going to need more and better data to measure and track progress against global climate change targets, including information on temperature changes, mapping deforestation and biodiversity in real time and cataloguing changes to flood plains as oceans rise. Making this data open by design could be the secret ingredient that accelerates progress.”
Leading science groups urge global accord on Open Data in a Big Data World
A group of four major international science organisations – including ISSC – have today called for global endorsement of an accord to help assure open access to volumes of “big data” that increasingly are the basis of research and policy-making.
The losing battle against corruption: why open data is important for Africa
In this article Irene Ikomu discusses how transparency through open data has the potential to eradicate corruption in Africa, but in order for that to happen the whole continent has to buy in.
What are the impacts of non-open licenses?
The ODI explains why the decision about which license to use is one of the most important steps in publishing a dataset.
Rapid, Climate-Informed Development Needed to Keep Climate Change from Pushing More than 100 Million People into Poverty by 2030
“A new World Bank report shows that climate change is an acute threat to poorer people across the world, with the power to push more than 100 million people back into poverty over the next fifteen years. And the poorest regions of the world – Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia – will be hit the hardest.”
The economic impact of open data: what do we already know?
“Open data fuels economic growth. Many believe in the theory and ask for the proof. A new report by Nesta and the ODI adds to the evidence of the impact of open data. The report’s analysis, undertaken by PwC, examines the effects of the Open Data Challenge Series (ODCS) and predicts the programme will result in a potential 10x return (£10 for every £1 invested over three years), generating up to £10.8m for the UK economy.”
Paying it forward in a digital age: A global community committed to a mapped world
When I first heard about OpenStreetMap (OSM) – the so called Wikipedia of maps, built by volunteers around the world – I was skeptical of its ability to scale, usability in decision making, and ultimate longevity among new ideas conceived in the digital age. Years later, having working on many disaster risk management initiatives across the globe, I can say that I am a passionate advocate for the power of this community. And I continue to be struck by the power of one small initiative like OSM that brings together people across cultures and countries to save lives. It is more than a technology or a dataset, it’s a global community of individuals committed to making a difference.
People may be surprised to find that the maps we take for granted in metropolitan areas of the developed world may be completely absent, vastly out of date, or pay-per-view in the developing world. Imagine an urban area without a transportation network, government agencies without access to the location of their assets (schools, health facilities, etc), or even a map without village names. This is the reality for many of the countries most vulnerable to disaster risk. Now, imagine this urban area facing an unprecedented crisis brought by flooding, an earthquake, a pandemic – think about the challenges of planning a response.
InaSAFE 3.2.1 now released
An InaSAFE bug fix release was launched. It which provides improvements to the presentation of impact summaries and can be downloaded from the QGIS plugin manager.
Sustainable Development Goals and Open Data
The United Nations (UN) has developed a set of action-oriented goals to achieve global sustainable development by 2030 and has included the importance of open data in the context of improving resilience to disasters.
Want a ‘Data Revolution’? Then listen to what citizens really want
“Why are the #OpenData and #CivicTech movements repeating all the old mistakes about top-down development? That was the major question tackled at a community skills day during the African Open Data Conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, between September 2-5…”
What does a world champion boxer have to do with saving lives in a disaster?
In this article Yann Kerblat shares how Project NOAH is making risk communication more comprehensible by incorporating Filipino icon and boxer, Manny Pacquiao.
MAPA-HANDA: Customizing InaSAFE for Philippine Context
Understanding the importance of decentralizing DRRM for a more relevant DRRM planning, Philippine’s National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), the NationaI Youth Commission (NYC), and the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) initiated MAPA-HANDA, a joint effort to develop online modules on mapping for local DRRM planning.
To Save Lives and Livelihoods, Start By Understanding Disaster Risk
In 1999, the state of Odisha, India, was hit by the most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Indian Ocean, causing nearly 10,000 fatalities and US$5 billion in damages. For the next decade, the government of Odisha and partners worked to identify and mitigate cyclone risk. When the similarly intense Cyclone Phailin struck Odisha in October 2013, the region counted 99.6% fewer deaths.
We cannot prevent a monsoon or cyclone from striking – and as population growth, urbanization, and climate change are on the rise, the frequency and impact of natural disasters will increase. But with innovation, collaboration and a better understanding of risk, we can build communities that are more resilient to natural hazards.
Open Cities in Kathmandu: Health Centers Critical Health Sector Infrastructure
As detailed in the context of Kathmandu, one aspect of the the Open Cities Project engagement is the collection of asset and exposure data in urban areas in order to create a robust asset inventory. The Open Cities Project collects data through open and participatory methods in partnership with local government agencies, universities, technical communities, and the private sector. Open Cities Kathmandu has to date mapped over 100,000 buildings and collected exposure data for 2256 educational and 350 health facilities within Kathmandu Valley.
Open Cities in Kathmandu: Educational Facilities Critical Educational Sector Infrastructure
As detailed in the context of Kathmandu, one aspect of the the Open Cities Project engagement is the collection of asset and exposure data in urban areas in order to create a robust asset inventory. The Open Cities Project collects data through open and participatory methods in partnership with local government agencies, universities, technical communities, and the private sector. Open Cities Kathmandu has to date mapped over 100,000 buildings and collected exposure data for 2256 educational and 350 health facilities within Kathmandu Valley.
Open Data for Resilience Initiative Field Guide
The Open Data for Resilience Initiative Field Guide highlights the use of GeoNode and crowdsourcing, and is aimed at practitioners considering how open data may support a DRM project.
Helping Build Resilient Communities
Following the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, the Government of Indonesia began compiling a comprehensive approach to disaster risk management (DRM). The World Bank has helped through several small interventions, such as preparing the software program InaSafe and supporting the building of ‘safe’ schools, which have had wide-ranging impact and incorporate disaster risk management in overall development planning.
New disaster management software released worldwide: InaSAFE 2.0
A new version of software that can predict the social and human impact of natural disasters was released in Indonesia on 7 April 2014.
TechRepublic highlights OpenDRI’s “excellent new field guide”
In a TechRepublic article, Alex Howard gives the Open Data for Resilience Initiative Field Guide a shout out while discussing how releasing open data supports the United States federal government’s goal of improving community resilience against climate change and primes the pump for meaningful reuse by tech giants.
Webinar: Data for Post-Disaster Decision-Making in Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
We are kicking off our Caribbean Open Data for Resilience (OpenDRI) Webinar Series on Wednesday, March 26 at 2:30 pm ET! This webinar, Data for Post-Disaster Decision-Making in Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, will focus on the Rapid Damage and Loss Assessment (DaLA) conducted in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the rapid disaster impact needs assessment conducted in Saint Lucia following the heavy rains that occurred on December 25, 2013.
Building climate and disaster resilience through open data and innovation
Type: Meeting or Conference Organizer: Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, the (GFDRR); World Bank, the (WB) Date: 20-21 Mar 2014 Location: United States of America (Washington D.C.) Venue: World Bank This two-day workshop will bring together key leaders from business, government, international development, academia and civil society to explore how we can work… Read more »
Insights in DRM – A Case for Open Data
Here is the debut publication of “Insights in DRM – A Practitioner’s Perspective on Disaster Risk Management in Latin America and the Caribbean”. The first issue, Open Data for Resilience (OpenDRI) in the Caribbean, focuses on the use of spatial data in decision making to reduce disaster risk.
Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI): Overview
The goal of this Overview Report, published in May 2013, is to communicate the vision, approach and impact of the Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI).
Open Data and Mapping for Disasters and Development
This post is a summary of one that appeared on the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery Site and was originally authored by Christina Irene.
Bank Climate Change Portal Helps Visualize World Climate, Expands Access to Data
How much will temperatures rise in 30, 40, or 50 years? How could changing weather affect rain-fed crops in the Horn of Africa, or winter flooding and summer droughts in Uzbekistan? And what should countries do to prepare for more intense droughts and storms?
These are the kinds of questions the World Bank hopes to answer with a new initiative to expand access to climate data and spark innovation in the fight against climate change around the world.