UN High Commissioner for Refugees: Climate Change and Displacement
Climate change and natural disasters can add to and worsen the threats that force people to flee across international borders. The interplay between climate, conflict, poverty and persecution greatly increases the complexity of refugee emergencies.

Victoria, Australia – National Climate Change and Agriculture Plan Agreed
Australian ministers met in Melbourne at the Agricultural Ministers’ Forum to endorse a Victorian-led program that will facilitate collaboration between state and Commonwealth governments to meet the challenges of climate change and support the agriculture sector to adapt.

Flood forecasting a cyclone game-changer for Fiji
The ground-breaking project has developed and implemented a Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS) that delivers an integrated approach to forecasting, monitoring and warning for coastal flooding, no matter what the cause – river or ocean.

Bangladesh to move Rohingya to flood-prone island 
Bangladesh will start relocating Rohingya Muslims to a flood-prone island off its coast as several thousand refugees have agreed to move. 

Tasman fire review finds shortfalls in New Zealand’s preparedness for large-scale blazes
A review of firefighting efforts during the Tasman fires last summer, which cost Fire and Emergency New Zealand $13 million, has found shortfalls in the number of skilled staff working in risk management.

UNSDSN TReNDS – SDG Financing Initiative
In 2018, SDSN launched and became the Co-Chair of a Working Group on SDG Costing & Financing with the IMF, OECD, and World Bank. This group convenes sector experts to aggregate their respective costing models and data for SDG targets, especially for low-income countries.

Addressing the Challenges of Drafting Contracts for Data Collaboration
Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) is a new initiative seeking to address barriers to data collaboration. The partnership, launched in early 2019, has already yielded a number of outputs, including a project inception brief, the Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration tool — which presents key considerations for the development of data sharing agreements — and an initial analytical framework.

GFDRR: Communication during disaster recovery
This Guide is intended primarily for local and national government officials and key decision-makers involved in disaster recovery planning and operations. It has been developed to support communication during recovery planning and operations in a range of different country contexts and any disaster type.

UNESCO Guidelines for Assessing Learning Facilities in the Context of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
For the celebrations of the International Day for Disaster Reduction 2019, UNESCO launched a new publication – The UNESCO Guidelines for Assessing Learning Facilities in the Context of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. The Guidelines follow VISUS methodology and come in three volumes – An Introduction to learning facilities assessment and to the VISUS Methodology, VISUS Methodology and VISUS Implementation

UNDRR Work Programme 2020-2021
The UNDRR Work Programme 2020-2021 outlines the plans to accelerate the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The plans are developed in line with the existing Strategic Framework covering 2016-2021 and focuses on the key results under each Strategic Objective of UNDRR.

Data Sharing at Scale: A Heuristic for Affirming Data Cultures
This essay introduces a heuristic for pursuing richer characterisations of the “data cultures” at play in international, interdisciplinary data sharing. The heuristic prompts cultural analysts to query the contexts of data sharing for a particular discipline, institution, geography, or project at seven scales – the meta, macro, meso, micro, techno, data, and nano.

Citizen science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Citizen science is an emerging example of a non-traditional data source that is already making a contribution. In this Perspective, a roadmap is presented that outlines how citizen science can be integrated into the formal Sustainable Development Goals reporting mechanisms.

World Bosai Forum/International Disaster Risk Conference 2019 – (09-12 Nov, Sendai, Japan)
The World Bosai Forum proposes solutions from various points of view to enable disaster risk reduction in Japan and overseas and aims to promote the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

Big data, Big Impact? The Future of Gender-Sensitive Data Systems – (New York City, 12 November)
This event will showcase the results of a five-year research program on big data and gender, featuring groundbreaking projects that investigated the potential of new data sources to answer critical questions about the lives of women and girls.

CODATA – VizAfrica Botswana (18-19 Nov, Botswana)
The VizAfrica 2019 Data Visualization Symposium will take place from 18th -19th November at the University of Botswana Gaborone, Botswana. The theme of the symposium is “Application of Data, Information and Scientific Visualization for Resource Management and Sustainability.”

Understanding Risk Europe – (27-29 November, Bucharest, Romania) 
The Understanding Risk Europe forum will provide a platform for the public and private sector, local, national and regional institutions, non-governmental organizations, academia and media to build partnerships and to share knowledge and best practices. Registration closes 15 November.

Evidence for Policy School – (Jan 13-15 2020, Florence, Italy)
The Evidence for Policy School aims to help researchers to have more impact on policy and policymakers to use evidence for policy solutions. The school will focus on the tools and approaches to inform the policymaking process through evidence. Scientists and policymakers are invited to send their applications fulfilling the listed criteria. Applications close 8 November.

“If you ask us for ideas, act on them” – Youth call out UN, world leaders on climate action
The Youth Climate Action Summit brought youth climate champions together from more than 140 countries and territories to a platform to share their solutions on the global stage, and deliver a clear message to world leaders: we need to act now to address climate change.

Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data – Data for Now Initiative
The Data For Now initiative seeks to increase the sustainable use of robust methods and tools that improve the timeliness, coverage, and quality of SDG data through collaboration and partnership, technical and capacity support, and information sharing.

We could be losing the race against climate change, new UN report says
Scientists behind a landmark study of the links between oceans, glaciers, ice caps and the climate delivered a stark warning to the world on Wednesday: slash emissions or watch cities vanish under rising seas, rivers run dry and marine life collapse.

UNEP FI: Leading Financial Firms Commit to Improved Transparency on the Risks of Climate Change
The Global Commission on Adaption estimates over $7 trillion of climate change-related damages over the next ten years. To respond to these challenges, five leading banks and investors are committing to disclose risks and opportunities for their portfolios from the impacts of climate change by 2021.

UK Government: UK Aid to protect one billion people form impact of extreme weather
A new £175 million package will help make people safer and better prepared for disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes, as well as dealing with the aftermath.

Artificial Intelligence May Help Predict El Niño
Professor Yoo-Geun Ham and collaborators created a model using deep learning that forecasts El Niño and La Niña events 18 months in advance, beating current models that forecast only 1 year ahead.

Next Generation Disaster Data Infrastructure
Based on the targets of the Sendai Framework, this white paper proposes the next generation of disaster data infrastructure, which includes both novel and the most essential information systems and services that a country or a region can depend on to successfully gather, process and display disaster data to reduce the impact of natural hazards.

SDSN TReNDS Counting on the World to Act –  A Roadmap for Governments to Achieve Modern Data Systems for Sustainable Development
In this report TReNDS details an action plan for governments and their development partners that will enable them to help deliver the SDGs globally by 2030.  Report recommendations specifically aim to empower government actors or others concerned with evidence in support of sustainable development to advocate for, build, and lead a new data ecosystem.

NASA’s Earth Observing Data and Information System – Near-Term Challenges
NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been a central component of the NASA Earth observation program since the 1990s. EOSDIS has evolved continually over the past three decades. However, many challenges remain. Challenges in three key areas are addressed in this paper: managing volume and variety, enabling data discovery and access, and incorporating user feedback and concerns.

Optimising Data Visualisation to Improve Humanitarian Decision-Making
The IFRC is inviting personnel and volunteers to submit visualisation designs for three core emergency operational datasets. The ten winners of the challenge will be invited to Geneva to attend a 3 day training on design principles led by Andy Kirk. Deadline for submission is 24 October.

World Bosai Forum/International Disaster Risk Conference 2019 – (09-12 Nov, Sendai, Japan)
The World Bosai Forum proposes solutions from various points of view to enable disaster risk reduction in Japan and overseas and aims to promote the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

GCF – Private Investment For Climate Conference 2019 – (Incheon, Republic of Korea, 7-9 October)
The GCF Private Investment for Climate Conference (“GPIC”) is a global marketplace and ecosystem where leading private sector actors including project sponsors, institutional investors, financial institutions, climate leaders, and the public sector come together to accelerate climate action in developing countries.

CODATA – VizAfrica Botswana (18-19 Nov, Botswana)
The VizAfrica 2019 Data Visualization Symposium will take place from 18th -19th November at the University of Botswana Gaborone, Botswana. The theme of the symposium is “Application of Data, Information and Scientific Visualization for Resource Management and Sustainability.”

CODATA – Helsinki Workshop on FAIR RDM in INstitutions (20-21 October, Helsinki, Finland) 
FAIR Research Data Management involves robust planning, policies, infrastructure, training and support. Institutes that produce and consume data are required to ensure seamless accessibility to data and ensure practices that foster its reuse.