Disaster Risk Reduction and Open Data Newsletter: June 2020 Edition

World Bank: To strengthen climate resilience, countries must strengthen economic resilience
Country-specific reforms need to be at the core of building macro-financial resilience and capacity to deal with climate-related risks. But because there seems to be a positive correlation between macro-financial and climate-related risks, support from the international community is also important. In this update, the World Bank has provided analysis to aid government policies.

WMO: Global partnership urges stronger preparation for hot weather during COVID-19
As the Northern Hemisphere enters what is expected to be another record-breaking heat season, a global network of health and climate experts supported by WMO has called for stronger preparation to keep people safe in hot weather without increasing the risk of the spread of COVID-19.

Advances highlighted in climate risk and early warning systems
As the world continues to manage COVID-19 and looks at ensuring that the recovery addresses climate change threats, the significance of advanced multi-hazard threat warnings and risk information has never been more widely acknowledged.

This is highlighted in the 2019 Annual Report of the Climate Risk & Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative, released jointly by the WMO, the GFDRR, and the UNDRR.

UNDRR: COVID-19 puts human rights of millions at risk
Loretta Hieber Girardet, chief of the UNDRR Asia and the Pacific Regional Office said the office would focus on the impact of emergency measures on freedom of expression, rising xenophobia, human rights of migrants and persons deprived of their liberty.

WMO: updates guidelines on multi-hazard impact-based forecast and warning systems
The World Meteorological Organization is updating its 2015 Guidelines on Multi-Hazard Impact-Based Forecast and Warning Services (IBFWS), which promote best practice in the development of effective hydrometeorological warning systems to improve public safety.

Are we there yet? The transition from response to recovery
As the world transitions to recovering from COVID-19, those developing that recovery need support in adjusting and improving their policies and measures. This paper provides a set of policy directions to be considered during the transition towards, as well as throughout, this transition phase. For a link to the full webinar, head here.

UNDRR Asia-Pacific brief: Business resilience in the face of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on businesses across Asia-Pacific. This brief highlights the challenges businesses face in building their resilience and offers recommendations to business owners and policymakers.

UNU-INWEH: Water and migration: A global overview
This report aims to support the United Nations (UN) and its partners in developing climate-sensitive conflict prevention approaches.

SDSN TReNDS Releases New Report, “Leaving No One Off The Map: A Guide For Gridded Population Data For Sustainable Development”
Drawing from an extensive literature review and interviews with key data providers and users in the POPGRID Data Collaborative, this new report presents an overview, analysis, and recommendations for the use of gridded population datasets in a wide range of application areas, such as in disaster response, health interventions, and survey planning.

Strengthening preparedness for COVID-19 in cities and urban settings
This document is to support local authorities, leaders and policy-makers in cities and other urban settlements in identifying effective approaches and implementing recommended actions that enhance the prevention, preparedness and readiness for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in urban settings, to ensure a robust response and eventual recovery.

UNESCO: How to respond to tsunamis in times of social distancing? Follow the regional guidelines
These guidelines aid to clarify possible confusion generated by COVID-19 sanitary priorities and regulations in regard to response actions during a tsunami warning such as evacuation and sheltering.

Reviewing the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) to Enhance Societal Readiness for El Niño’s Impacts
In this article, it is proposed that the ONI value of 0.7 °C identifies a tipping point at which the El Niño event becomes locked in, which can provide an additional lead time for mitigative actions to be taken by societal decision-makers.

June 9: Could El Niño Long Range Warning System help countries manage the effects of severe weather events?
Currently, many countries are experiencing severe drought. Could the impacts of drought have been minimised with an effective long-range warning system (LRWS)?Join us for a free webinar as we discuss this important matter.

GEO Virtual Symposium 2020 (15-19 June)
The GEO Virtual Symposium 2020 is less than one month away! The schedule of events taking place from June 15-19 has just been released – entirely online.

CODATA: Smart and Sustainable Cities Datathon (Registration ends June 30)
The Smart Datathon will create the environment for early career researchers and data science enthusiasts to create insights and models from extracting and analysing open data sources from various open platforms in order to develop novel solutions that will lead to real-world solutions, benefiting the cities and the society at large.

Webinar: Glacier Loss and the Climate Change Crisis: Evidence from Patagonia and the Last Glacial Maximum (June 16) ​
The Centre for Crisis Studies and Mitigation at The University of Manchester invites you for a virtual session. The talk will be followed by moderated Q&A via Zoom Chat.

Webinar: Disaster Resilient Infrastructure: A Tale of Two Floods (June 23)
The Centre for Crisis Studies and Mitigation at The University of Manchester invites you to a virtual session on how globally rainfall patterns are changing due to climate change, and the major challenges to the resilience infrastructure.

UNESCO Global Consultations on Open Science: deadline 15 June.
Are you a scientist, a publisher, a science policymaker or someone with experience and interest in Open Science? Your input is important to the UNESCO process. Please participate in the survey designed to collect inputs for the development of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.