Coordination mechanism of data exchange at the continental and regional level

Developed by: Z M Sajjadul Islam

Early Warning Expert of ACMAD

UNDRR Consultant

Contents

1.0         Introduction and Background: 4

1.1 Purpose of the Multi-hazard Early Warning Data Coordination Mechanism.. 4

1.1 Objectives of the Data Coordination & Exchange Mechanism.. 5

2.0  Prosed Structures of Coordination Mechanism for Data Exchange. 7

2.1 Actionable coordination Mechanism for Data Exchange. 8

2.2 Roles of AUC for the coordination. 10

2.3         Roles of RECs Level coordination. 10

2.2         Roles  of ACMAD level 10

2.3         Roles of ICPAC level 11

2.4         Roles of Member States : 11

2.5         Coordination mechanism with WMO designated RSMC/RCC : 11

2.6         Principle of Coordination mechanism of data exchange. 12

3.0         Data Dissemination & Feedbacks Receiving Mechanism.. 13

3.1         The necessity of  launching MHEWS web portal 13

3.2         Social journalism/Citizen through social media. 13

3.3         Messaging with Telegram Apps. 13

3.4         Instance Messaging, voice /video calling : 13

3.5         Uses of national media outlets and Community Radio. 14

3.6         Some simplified users of MHEWS. 14

3.7         Recommendations. 14

Acronyms:

1.0  Introduction and Background:

The core component of improving disaster risk management governances is inextricably linked to the outflow of the exclusive level of climate extreme and disaster risk information exchange and coordination at multiple levels by establishing a robust coordination mechanism. Given that African context of climate extreme and impending multi-hazards are being interacted with rapid on-set disaster events over the diverse landscape and doing the colossal level of damage to life, livelihoods and eventually to jeopardize the food security with quite a larger extent. The extreme climatic phenomena continue to exacerbating as IPCC project that Africa already exceeded 2°C by the last two decades of this century and over the end of the century Africa will be falling in between 3°C and 6°C[1] and it is very likely that the land temperatures over Africa will rise faster than the global land average, particularly in the more arid regions, and that the rate of even increase in minimum temperatures will exceed that of maximum average temperatures today. The nature of incremental pace of changing climates and subsequently intensity of multi-hazard events is more often being characterized as catastrophes over the past decades. Given that circumstances, the comprehensive management of disaster events required a holistic level of participation in risk screening, information exchange & repository, management & process, development of informed tools to instrumentalizing risk integrated planning from central to the local level.

The frameworks approach over to inclusive emergency information service deliveries with coherent horizontal and vertical coordination mechanisms of the information exchange among national governments, focal points, institutional, stakeholders, users’ level for dealing with disaster emergencies and target to achieve SDG 2030 and beyond.

However, activating an integrated multi-hazard early warnings system and delegating the most time-critical and accurate level of forecast and prediction of extreme weather is a more critical job, which required multi-faceted functionaries and coordinated mechanisms for effective and interactive service deliveries.

1.1 Purpose of the Multi-hazard Early Warning Data Coordination Mechanism  

The most important ingredients for developing impact-based early warnings are encompassing comprehensive observation and analysis of extreme weather parameters, another rapidly developing weather system (e.g. RDT), etc., which are very essential for developing extreme weather forecasts. To develop impact based multi-hazard Everly warning tool, the given forecast needs to be further analyzing with spatial analytical tools (GIS software).  Principally, the more precision level early Warnings, the more appropriate level of early actions (EWEA).  Impact-based forecasting can effectively be informed organizations and communities to formulate understandable and actionable messages and take respective preparedness and response measures.

Considering the inflow and outflow of datasets & information, the African Union Commission ( AUC) undertaken initiatives aligning the Sendai Framework & Global Framework for Climate Services  (GFCS) approach based paradigm of developing MHEWS, dissemination, and integrating with risk-informed decision-making process at the local level.

The main goal of MHEWS is to leverage the best practices, innovative methodologies, and existing tools to share actionable early warnings and build sustainability for climate information and early warning systems initiatives. The African Union Commission (AUC) needs to solicit disaster risk data from member states.

This coordination mechanism is expected to be providing the way forward for the collection and management, usage of the data and products and the rights of the data providers specify the roles and the contacts of the responsible data holders and providers. These mechanisms will be able to set synergies for data exchange coordination amongst the core stakeholders e.g. Africa Union Commission (AUC), Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and Member States (MS), and other relevant stakeholders.

1.1 Objectives of the Data Coordination & Exchange Mechanism  

The objectives of this data coordination and exchange mechanism are to strengthen the AUC’s pivotal roles in establishing and improving the mechanism of dissemination of severe weather forecasts, facilitate interactive and effective communication, coordination for exchange of disaster emergency data and information on on-set disaster events at the local level, and subsequently preparing an event situation report on the occasion of disaster being declared by the Member states.

Improving the disaster risk management governance at multiple levels following through the top-down & bottom-up approach with the following technical objectives :

1. Delegating the job to the Situation room ( ACMAD & ICPAC)  for developing severe weather forecasts, and multi-hazard situation reporting :

As a regular interval, the AUC delegated responsibilities to two regional WMO designated Regional Climate Centers ( ACMAD & ICPAC) for developing two products “Continental Watch” on severe weather forecasting on the ahead of 5 days and giving the threshold of 5 days amount of precipitation accumulation with the projection of rainfall color coded level of warnings and advisories on probable consequences and also the advisories of strong winds.

• Implying policy advocacy of multi-hazard risk screening, data capture, information coordination  

• Implying policy advocacy to Member Stats( MS), RECs, National hydro-meteorological service providers(NHMS), and beyond to remain operational in risk screening, data & information capture, and coordinating the datasets, and information to AUC situation room.
• Putting policy regulation in place and delegating member states of taking stock of all information of disaster incidence, disaster damage and loss profile(picture, videos), assessment report,  documentaries, humanitarian response, response gaps, post-disaster impacts on sectors, economies, livelihoods,  public health and building back better approach.
• Putting policy regulation to MS to establish coherent coordination mechanism under standing orders on disaster (SoD)  for exclusive engagement of  DRM stakeholders &  actors, the private sector, NGOs, social services organizations,  and the civil society, etc., as partners for incorporating inputs(feedback) to MHEWS  as a way to ensure their long-term sustainability.

• Improving Africa Media Monitor (AMM) Structures, Procedures, and Service automation

1. Underpinning the most prioritized action of upgrading AMM web portals so that it can crawl and grab relevant disaster event information from all new outlets and develop a repository for easy access.
2. Specialized Web portal development for exclusively disseminating and interacting disaster event information. Taking into account the centralized role as AUCs as a continental body, this organization undertakes advocacies of disseminating severe weather forecasting tool “continental watch” at sub-organs, regions, and member states level and beyond level.
3. Developing a disaster event database on past disasters
4. Develop a digital library of disaster event information.

• Developing interactive forum over the social networks 

1. Utilize the social networking platform for inclusive interactive participation of audiences.
2. Taking feedbacks from stakeholders, focal points, vulnerable communities for further customization and improvement of products and services for meeting the demand.
3. The development, access, and use of the best science and new technologies underpin all components of multi-hazard early warning systems.
4. Feedbacks that learning from good practices of understanding & receiving early warnings by the vulnerable community from the remote & hard-to-reach areas.
5. Strengthening the Early Warning for Early Action (EWEA) chain, taking on an impact-based forecasting approach in early warning to enable organizations and communities to formulate understandable and actionable messages and take respective preparedness and response measures.
6. Upgrading web portal of Africa Media Monitor for customization to capture disaster event information at the up-to-date level.

[1] IPCC

2.0  Prosed Structures of Coordination Mechanism for Data Exchange

Following through a participatory, inclusive, and open-ended platform which is expected to render both ways effective communication and can leverage the robust coordination mechanism. The target goal of AUC led process is to develop extreme weather risk-informed tools CW  and event situation report for delivering multi-hazard risk early warnings effectively. Partnership development among the continental and regional level (RECs & beyond) must appropriate operational institutional bodes to generate, exchange and disseminate information. The principles of the MHEWS mechanism are to routinely collate, store and process information about past, present, and future extreme weather events. The typical architecture of coordination mechanism to simultaneously function both way traffic of information dissemination and exchange.   Primarily myDEWETRA can be accessed by web at https://www.mydewetra.world   for  downloading and customization multi-hazard risk, analyzing weather parameters for  developing specific  products, and running with this open-source systems through https://test.mydewetra.world/

The implementation strategy of mechanism encompasses a multi-tiered structure that of AUC delegated  and collaborative process to ensure continental and regional level coordination and data exchange facilitating the CW and event situation reports are generated, exchanged, and disseminated:

1. Continental level through a range of advanced continental bodies;
   1. Regional level through RECs;
   1. Member states level through the national network of entities with national and local level ; 
   1. Nationally and locally by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), vulnerable sectors, humanitarian partners.

Figure  1 : Typical Structures of Coordination of  Data Exchange Mechanism

2.1 Actionable coordination Mechanism for Data Exchange

Table: Actionable coordination Mechanism for Data Exchange

2.2 Roles of AUC for the coordination

AUC with its centralized roles to delegate responsibilities to two situation rooms (Regional RCC)  e.g. ACMAD & ICPAC for developing two products “Continental Watch” on the severe weather forecast on the ahead of 5 days giving warnings based on the threshold of 5 days amount of precipitation accumulation with a projection of rainfall severity of the color-coded level of warnings and advisories on probable consequences.

Based on impact-based early warnings, AUC invokes the process of event situation reporting to be formulated by ICPAC & ACMAD on the occasions of impending disaster, disaster events just occurred, and ongoing at the ground.

2.3   Roles of RECs Level coordination

In the light of the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action for the Development of Africa, the Abuja Treaty[1] proposed action for the creation of RECs as the basis for wider African integration, with a view to regional and eventual continental integration. The RECs are increasingly involved in coordinating AU Member States’ interests in wider areas such as peace and security, development and good governance, and promoting climate risk governance to the member countries.[2]

AUC having 8 Regional Economic Communities (RECs) at the regional level. RECs can play important role in delegating disaster risk information repository and exchange with the respective member states (MS) and situation rooms at the country level.

The AU recognizes eight RECs :

1. Arab Maghreb Union (UMA)
2. Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)
3. Community of Sahel–Saharan States (CEN–SAD)
4. East African Community (EAC)
5. Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)
6. Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
7. Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)2
8. Southern African Development Community (SADC).

2.2          Roles  of ACMAD level

ACMAD primary role is to provide continental watch ( weather forecasting) from its newly installed continental situation room to AUC. ACMAD as a continental body can incentivize the multiple meteorological products and services for tailoring to support policy and planning desk for the risk-informed development planning process for the continental actors. UNDRR support this center already supporting AUC with customized weather information and services data sources to make publicly available to interoperable formats

ACMAD can further play an important role in encouraging the member countries to incentivize the spatial risk information by the regional, national, and local authorities with higher-level or data desegregation for sectoral risk analysis and developing the coherent institutional linkage within the guideline of the Sendai Framework.

For institutional strengthening process;

• ACMAD coordination mechanism with other WMO-designated RSMC/RCC for data sharing.
• Establish coordination mechanisms for data exchange with the Data Collection or Production Centre (DCPC) e.g. Casablanca
• Coordination with WMO Information System (WIS) for developing and sharing global catalog services on weather information service, data exchange, management, and processing..
• Establish coordination with EUMETCast for improving access to nowcasting services.
• Establish coordination with Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs) to produce consensus-based, user-relevant climate outlook products in real time to reduce climate-related risks and support sustainable development.

2.3   Roles of ICPAC level

ICPAC WMO designated regional climate center and provides customized climate services to  AUC and 11 East African Countries and regions deeply affected by climate change and extreme weather.

2.4  Roles of Member States :

RECs remain to be forefront policy and programming desk to invoke country-level state and non-state actors to remain operational and collect, collate and provide information on preparedness planning/contingencies of impending disasters and post-disasters damage, need the information to MHEWS. MS to recurrently maintain contacts with national focal points,  humanitarian actors, and focal points for getting regular updates and concurrently to update to RECs and AUC.  

2.5  Proposed coordination mechanism with WMO designated RSMC/RCC :

ACMAD is being proposed as the central continental body for coordinating the WMO-level extreme weather information, effectively integrating scientific and technical inputs, and producing CW at regular intervals. Every RSMC/RCC/WIS/DCPC in Africa has particular focuses over their region. As per WMO guidelines, ACMAD remains to be communicated with those centers for getting regional outlooks and weather updates.

[1] https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/67/ 

[2] https://au.int/en/organs/recs

Figure 2: Proposed linkages among the WMO Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers

2.2   Principle of Coordination mechanism of data exchange

• Develop a highly professional-looking and integrative web portal complementing the  MHEWS dissemination ( www.mhews.auc.int or www.mhews.int ) which to be administered, content being regularly updated by AUC Situation Room/EOC  at AUC.
  • Disseminate the most understandable, accurate, and timely CW & event situation report to the designated authority and keep it simple.
  • Making messages and tools easily understandable to stakeholders and letting users provide feedback with social media.
  • Situation rooms at AUC, ACMAD, and ICPAC continue to support other Situation Rooms/EOC at  RECs & Member State level
  • AUC AMM needs to use interactive social media tools (Social media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, telegram, etc.) for a big data repository (pictures, videos, descriptions of damage). By analyzing that information, provide an accurate set of information on ongoing disaster events for reporting and next-level response planning.
  • Activating and effective communication among the AUC, ACMAD, ICPAC, RECs, and Member states by using email, and social media communication tools, and keeping constant contact.
  • Create an understandable extreme weather severity level with color-coded threshold and types of alerts, e.g. Red, Orange, and Yellow for a wide range of users.
  • AUC ,  ACMAD, ICPAC, RECs, MS, and other relevant stakeholders to remain Integrated with other alerting systems (i.e. earthquake, volcano, dust storm, drought, forest/bush fire, and health alerts) for complementing MHWES.

3.0   Data Dissemination & Feedback Receiving Mechanism

The most important element of communication for coordination mechanism data exchange to reaching out to target stakeholders and maintaining them in the coordination and exchange loop. The African continental multi-hazard contexts are so diverse in terms of landscape, extreme weather phenomena,  risks, and vulnerabilities, and the most erratic weather systems of the globe. As a result, the extreme weather events over the continent are highly rapid on-set, recurrent, and larger extent of damages. Stakeholders and vulnerable communities remain to be hopeless in addressing the multi-hazards trauma.

 Accurate and timely access to impact-based multi-hazards early warnings can minimize damage at the local level. The process is reiterative, interactive, and opened ended nature the modality for keeping last-mile informed and interactively learning lessons from them, and being informed by how to formulate forecast-based appropriate intervention response planning.  Understanding community vulnerabilities is a difficult process because of the diverse landscape and topographical context. However, the myDEWETRA platform provided input datasets that can easily be interpreted with GIS software for community and other multiple levels of vulnerabilities. The platform has the interface of a multi-hazard alerts system for larger audiences, and that can be utilized for the dissemination of the MHEW information.

3.1  The necessity of  launching the MHEWS web portal

To date, AUC does not have a classified MHEWS web portal for disseminating only the multi-hazards, their impacts, and advisories for the decision-making desks, which is now an urgent requirement. The highly programmatical web portal will be able to capture the feed information from local-level actors.  Proposed web portal address e.g. www.mhews.auc.int  or www.mhews.int

3.2     Social journalism/Citizen through social media

Using the social media platform for ensuring inclusive participation in the hybrid feeding back processes through the social journalism media model that consists of a wide range of contributors and readers in the network. The social journalist can be involved in capturing the photographs and videos of the on-set disaster events and post the social network (Facebook group/page, Twitter group, Telegram, LinkedIn Group, etc.) as big data for further analysis and decision making.

3.3        Messaging with Telegram Apps 

This app user can provide feedback to the circulated early warnings. AUC media monitor and situation room to create the user group for disseminating information and taking feedback.

3.4        Instance Messaging, voice /video calling :

These are the most important and useful tools for live chatting and watching ground-level disaster damage and impact scenarios by using WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups,  Telegram groups, and other IM tools. Those tools are expected to enable media monitors to capture remote and hard-to-reach area information.

3.5        Uses of National Media Outlets and Community Radio

This is the most comprehensive and affordable means of communication are the national radio, Television, cell broadcasting, cell phone Interactive voice response (IVR), and most importantly Community radios, which can be called as lifeline of the information-accessing modality. Member States can vastly rely on Community radio for biding the last mile information dissemination gaps.

3.6        Some simplified users of MHEWS

Policy Makers. This group is comprised of RECs policy desks, Member State level national and local governments, sector departments, NHMS, and other relevant policy intuitions.

Local vulnerable communities: This group is comprised of smallholder farmers, vulnerable communities, etc.

Farmers:   This target group is comprised of crop farmers, smallholder farmers, industrialized farmers, pastoralists (livestock herders), fishermen, and rural enterprises. This target group has multiple needs for weather and climate information. It can save lives, contain losses, increase productivity and reduce risk. Reaching rural farmers is a challenge, Internet communication is virtually impossible, literacy is low, and there are regional and village-level cultural and language differences. ( community radio could be  useful  )

Private Sector. Private sector enterprises benefit from tailored weather information to protect human and physical resources and make climate-smart business decisions, they can also play a role in disseminating messages.

3.7        Recommendations

In addition to the proposed coordination mechanism, the necessity of need-based and impact-based MHEWS is mounting with the given changing erratic weather pattern. MHEWS It is an essential instrument to keep the relevant audiences informed about the impending hazards. The following can be considered for making CW and event situation reporting and issuing   MHEWS at a robust level;

1. Establish effecting coordination mechanism ( as of figure 1) for accessing the extreme weather parameters and developing standard CW and effective communication with focal points for accessing local level disaster event, damage & loss, and humanitarian needs information for making an event situation immediately after a disaster occurs and anticipated impending event of disasters
2. Establish myDEWETRA platform for developing impact-based forecasting products (CW), and alerting.
3. Establish Coordination among WMO regional centers ( as of future 2) for region-specific extreme weather information exchange with AUC and other situation rooms.
4. Develop a Disaster risk management (DRM) and MHEWS  framework on how to complement an actionable  MHEWS  for stakeholders.
5. Develop an online portal on    MHEWS 
6. Develop social media platforms for information dissemination and coordination.
7. Delegating the job to RCCs(ACMAD & ICPAC)  for developing severe weather forecasts, and multi-hazard situation reporting.
8. Implying policy advocacy of multi-hazard risk screening, data capture, information coordination 
9. Improving Africa Media Monitor (AMM) Structures, Procedures, and Service Automation
10. Establishing and functioning interactive social networking platform for inclusive participation and information exchange, the early warnings dissemination process
11. Implying policy advocacy of multi-hazard risk screening, data capture, information coordination 
12. Implying policy regulation to member states to establish a coherent coordination mechanism under standing orders on disaster(SoD)  for exclusive engagement of DRM stakeholders & actors, the private sector, NGOS, social services organizations, and civil society as partners for incorporating inputs to    MHEWS as a way to ensure their long-term sustainability.
13. Improving Africa Media Monitor (AMM) Structures, Procedures, Service Automation
14. Developing a disaster event database on Africa on past disasters
15. Develop a digital library of disaster event information.
16. Establishing and functioning interactive social networking platform for inclusive participation and information exchange, the early warnings dissemination process