Tools and Methods for Estimating Populations at Risk from Natural Disasters and Complex Humanitarian Crises (2007) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix E Technical Papers
Appendix E Technical Papers
Pages 175-248
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From page 175... ...
LIST OF TECHNICAL PAPERS Assessing the Strengths and Weaknesses of Existing Data for Estimating Subnational Populations at Risk from Disasters Associated with Natural Hazards Mark Pelling, King's College, London In Harm's Way: Estimating Populations at Risk Jerome E Dobson, University of Kansas 1
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Identify Ways in Which Subnational Demographic and geographic Data and Tools Could be Used to Help Decision Makers Provide Useful Information to Populations at Risk Shannon Doocy, Johns Hopkins University Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, Baltimore, Maryland Cognitive and Institutional Limits on Collecting and Processing Data on Populations at Risk: Preliminary Reflections on Southern African Responses to Displacement Loren B Landau, Wits University's Forced Migration Studies Programme, Johannesburg, South Africa Strengths and Limitations of Information and Data Analysis in Responding to Crisis in Mali Mamadou Kani Konaté, CAREF, Bamako, Mali ASSESSINg THE STRENgTHS AND WEAkNESSES OF EXISTINg DATA FOR ESTIMATINg SUbNATIONAL POPULATIONS AT RISk FROM DISASTERS ASSOCIATED WITH NATURAL HAZARDS Mark pelling, king's College, london INTRODUCTION This paper offers a review of international disaster databases.
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TAbLE E-1 International Disaster Databases EM-DAT NatCat Sigma DesInventar Web site http://www.cred.be/emdat http://www.munichre.com/ http://www.swissre.com/ http://www.desinventar.org/ Management University (CRED) Private Private University/NGO (La Red)
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The database includes relatively small disasters for which reliable data exist. The main aim of EM-DAT is to support research, and great effort is put into the verification of input data; nonetheless, many challenges to data quality and completeness remain.
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• Sometimes DesInventar has to draw on national sources of data, and in these cases it is very difficult to disaggregate to determine the local distribution of losses. Subnational DesInventar databases also exist for individual states in the U.S., Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, and India.
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For example, in the Bam earthquake, mortality was put at 43,200 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) , at 31,884 by the French Agency Press, and at 26,796 by the International Federal of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
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It is also possible that losses during past disasters will lead to local learning and the building of resilience, rather than the continuation of vulnerability, so that past impacts might locally be associated with future security rather than vulnerability. Regular assessments accompanied by contextual analysis of pressures shaping hazard, vulnerability, and disaster risk management can help overcome this challenge for measuring local risk.
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12 toolS aND MethoDS foR eStIMatING populatIoNS at RISk on livelihood could be measured, but this can only be done on the ground and at the local level. Where economic impacts are to be used to indicate vulnerability or risk, three challenges should be considered.
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IN HARM'S WAy: ESTIMATINg POPULATIONS AT RISk Jerome e. Dobson, university of kansas My charge is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of existing data, methods, and tools for population analysis at subnational levels.
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TIME Time is crucial for most types of emergency response. To what precision can the timing of each incident be predicted?
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Wars typically are complex emergencies consisting of disasters intended by one protagonist and unavoidable for the other. Ideally, population data would be updated in real-time as each disaster unfolds, but this would require an exceptional capability for data acquisition, analysis, computation, and dissemination that does not exist at present.
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From page 186... ...
CURRENT DATAbASES The de facto world standard for estimating populations at risk in natural disasters, technological accidents, and wars is the LandScan Global Population Database. It comes in two resolutions, 30 arc-seconds for the whole Earth and 3 arc-seconds for much of the United States.
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The Center for International Earth Science Information Network's (CIESIN) Gridded Population of the World (GPW)
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Globally, GPW includes more administrative units, many of whose digital boundary files are precise enough for georegistering with GPW cells but not with the finer LandScan cells. GPW's uniform distributions uninfluenced by other variables make it less precise and therefore less suitable for real-time emergency management and humanitarian relief applications.
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The United Nations International and Administrative Boundaries Group is making an effort in this area through its Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) database, but much more work needs to be done.
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Human population in the biodiversity hotspots. Nature 404 (27 April)
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He and ORNL colleagues produced the LandScan Global Population Database, which has become the world standard for estimating populations at risk during natural disasters, wars, and terrorist acts. LandScan recently gained widespread acclaim as the only feasible means of estimating populations impacted by the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.
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Often demographic or other population data are needed to develop and support policy positions. Within the DOS, the Bureau of Oceans and Integrated Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES)
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Subnational population data do not apply only to disaster response situations. For example, GIS-based subnational population data are needed to track the population of the Solomon Islands for hazard mitigation, resource allocation, and economic development.
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The DOS regularly makes use of available counts or estimates of those in need of humanitarian assistance for the purpose of identifying potential beneficiaries of aid, but at the same time there is poor knowledge of resident populations and local services, making it difficult to assess the environmental and social stress caused by large numbers of displaced persons. This limits the department's ability to track the distribution of resources and to ensure that aid is reaching those for whom it is intended.
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, and the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) , and is considering using population data in other programs.
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Weaknesses in the data can result in very inaccurate assessments of food availability, food import, and food needs. For example, whether Zimbabwe has 13 million or 10 million residents, after massive emigration to South Africa and elsewhere, has a huge impact on what the country's government will have to import to supplement its failed harvests and what the donor community may have to plan to supplement and distribute.
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Availability Due to lack of available subnational population data, specific questions from planners and field personnel have gone unanswered. This has led to additional costs, compromised activities, and in some cases, the failure of projects.
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National- or provincial-level census data do not have the fidelity to provide the information needed for detailed analysis or planning. Also, frequent changes in administrative boundaries pose problems in reallocating populations if population data are not available at the appropriate scale.
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, and (2) allowing the unit and its partners to mobilize quickly to collect and analyze subnational population data for a specific high-priority country on very short notice.
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Yet PRB is not a portal with access to most geospatial population data and does not provide an opportunity to check spatial data against some accepted "known" data set.
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For example, an analyst must constantly overestimate the presence of infectious diseases, just to provide the safest assessment to the audience. This may lead to a distortion of actual disease risk and might encourage the channeling of humanitarian assistance resources or funding away from deserving areas and toward lower-risk ones.
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Standard operating procedures for data collection and standards for data content, accuracy, acquisition, transfer, and interoperability should be developed. The Federal Geographic Data Committee; its international arm, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure; and the Open GIS Consortium could provide models or a vehicle for developing standards for geospatial population databases.
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10. A program for systematic global subnational population data collection and estimation, administered in the Census Bureau should be developed and funded.
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This paper introduces and briefly discusses possible avenues for addressing the inadequacy of geographic place names and political boundary data in countries worldwide. Addressing these fundamental issues will aid in removing some of the structural impediments to organizations dispersing emergency aid and will facilitate international, national, and private efforts in making and retrieving population estimates that are part of emergency relief plans.
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The UN recognized the importance of names standardization in 1948 and held the first Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (UNCSGN) in 1967 to encourage national and international geographical names standardiza tion; to promote the international dissemination of nationally standardized geographical names information; and to adopt single romanization sys tems for the conversion of each non-Roman writing system to the Roman alphabet.4 1http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn.htm.
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The subject areas include the following: Functions of Official Geographical Names, UNGEGN Resolutions, National Geographic Names Authorities, Language Issues, Technical Issues and Toponymic Research, Cartography and Geographic Names, Field Work Preparation, International Issues, Toponymic Data Files, and Databases and Gazetteers. The faculty is drawn from UNGEGN members through funding from either the UNGEGN Secretariat or a member country.
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,15 and elsewhere directly with foreign governments. The Proposed Way Ahead • Government relief agencies and NGOs concerned with emergency relief and UNGEGN divisions and working groups should engage each other to create useful solutions to the problem of inadequate place-name data in emergency areas.
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Accurate and acceptable geospatial depiction at varied scales remains a challenge in work with political boundaries. Both IBRU and UNGIWG should be engaged by emergency relief organizations to help address administrative boundary inadequacies.
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Organizations such as UNGIWG will be left to guide the development of standards for the accurate geospatial depiction of administrative boundaries at a variety of scales. The Funding IBRU would have to be paid,24 and UNGIWG would require additional funding to move beyond offering just one, small-scale administrative boundaries data set.
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The Proposed Way Ahead • Government relief agencies and NGOs concerned with emergency relief should engage UNGIWG and IBRU to create useful solutions to the problem of inadequate administrative boundary data in emergency areas. • UNGIWG and IBRU should support the Department of State and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)
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He transferred to P and served as chief from June 2005 to July 2006. IDENTIFy WAyS IN WHICH SUbNATIONAL DEMOgRAPHIC AND gEOgRAPHIC DATA COULD bE USED TO HELP DECISION MAkERS PROvIDE USEFUL INFORMATION TO POPULATIONS AT RISk Shannon Doocy, Johns hopkins university Center for Refugee and Disaster Response INTRODUCTION Over the past several decades, natural disasters have become more frequent, and the populations affected by disasters annually are following a similar and increasing trend (IFRC, 2003)
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. Postdisaster surveys of affected populations that incorporate aspects of population movements, needs assessment, living conditions, and health data with spatial modeling are ideal tools for providing information on disaster vulnerability and impact and have a practical role in assisting governments and humanitarian organizations in disaster response by promoting informed management and decision making.
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From page 213... ...
In addition to problems that may arise due to the quality of population data, subnational demographic information is typically provided by an administrative unit, which may create challenges when describing populations at risk or affected by disasters because disaster-prone regions are seldom congruent with administrative boundaries. A recent innovation and resource for characterizing populations at risk of and affected by disasters is spatially distributed demographic data.
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. ASSESSMENT OF POPULATION STATUS AND vULNERAbILITy The availability of spatially distributed demographic data allows for the quantification of the population at risk of or affected by a disaster; however, it does not provide an indication of the status of the population or of humanitarian assistance needs in the post-disaster context.
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From page 215... ...
Human factors in vulnerability include social and demographic variables such as population age structure, sex, and socioeconomic status; the latter encompasses education, occupation, and other measures of social and economic status such as wealth or membership in certain group. Environmental risk models can be combined with spatially distributed subnational demographic data to provide an initial characterization of disaster-affected populations.
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Estimates of surviving and displaced populations are generally available from local governments and the United Nations in the post-disaster context and serve as the basis for many assessments and the planning of humanitarian assistance. Spatially distributed demographic data, environmental risk models, and population-based assessments of disaster-affected regions are important tools that can aid decision makers in characterizing vulnerable populations and humanitarian assistance needs in the aftermath of disasters.
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COgNITIvE AND INSTITUTIONAL LIMITS ON COLLECTINg AND PROCESSINg DATA ON POPULATIONS AT RISk: PRELIMINARy REFLECTIONS ON SOUTHERN AFRICAN RESPONSES TO DISPLACEMENT loren b. landau, wits university's forced Migration Studies programme, Johannesburg, South africa INTRODUCTION This paper explores how cognitive and institutional structures limit researchers', policy makers', and service agencies' efforts to collect and process critical information on mobile and displaced populations.
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This paper explores two concerns related to displaced populations in southern Africa. Although sound research design, representative sampling, and objectivity are the hallmarks of good academic and policy-oriented research (Jacobsen and Landau, 2003)
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and through my role at the Forced Migration Studies Programme in Johannesburg and as chair of the executive committee of South Africa's National Consortium of Refugee Affairs. In these latter roles, I have had opportunities to interact extensively with migrants, service providers, advocates, and government officials from throughout southern Africa.
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That the language and policy that characterize southern African responses to asylum seekers so evidently echo those in Europe, Australia, and North America, illustrates the power of discourse in shaping policy frames. Regardless of their precise origins, researchers wishing to say anything about immigration or asylum cannot dodge these considerations but consider how the parameters of these paradigms shape research questions, findings, and dissemination strategies.
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Through its discussion of limitations on research and policy discussions on migrant populations in southern Africa, the following section illustrates these limitations and variables. HEIgHTENED CONSTRAINTS IN MAPPINg DISPLACEMENT No policy arenas exist in which scientific inquiry consistently dominates symbolism, values, and political priorities.
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Domestic migrants or those who have been internally displaced may have fewer reasons to hide, but they are also less likely to traverse established surveillance sites (e.g., borders, immigration check points) and are unlikely to encounter relatively well-resourced aid agencies that have incentives to count them.
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vulnerability to a surprise storm, despite prior efforts to coordinate its emergency response apparatus. In countries facing severe research scarcities -- a category including most African states -- the problems are even more acute.
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The following section outlines some of the parameters that structure research and policy discussions around displacement in southern Africa. PARAMETERS OF THE POLICy-RESEARCH DISCOURSE ON DISPLACEMENT IN SOUTHERN AFRICA As the previous pages discuss, decision makers and researchers tend to see only what they have predetermined is relevant or important to their policy deliberations.
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Tenet One: Immigration is Structured and Controlled by National Policy Southern African immigration and asylum policies are founded on a misplaced faith in governments' ability to prevent cross-border movements. The focus on identity documents, detention, and deportation is illustrative of this, as is the need for asylum seekers and refugees to report regularly to designated offices.
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, for example, indicates that there were 345,161 non-South African Africans in the country. Although this is certainly an undercount, the total number of foreigners is likely to be 500,000-850,000 (Crush and Williams, 2001)
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Few, however, have asked whether such precise information is needed or if the South African government has the interest or capacity to respond to anything other than rough estimates. The fixation on numbers and on categorizing migrants by legal status has drawn attention away from other issues related to the composition and dynamics of migrant communities.
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such beliefs by proclaiming: "If we as South Africans are going to compete for scarce resources with millions of aliens who are pouring into South Africa, then we can bid goodbye to our Reconstruction and Development Program [RDP] ." He went on to argue: The employment of illegal immigrants is unpatriotic because it deprives South Africans of jobs and .
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Much of the debate around migrants generally is about whether they have a positive or negative impact on South Africans. Such a question cannot be answered definitively and depends largely on the level of analysis and the metrics used (see Landau, 2003)
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230 toolS aND MethoDS foR eStIMatING populatIoNS at RISk little other research exists on communities living in remote or inhospitable areas, these findings give an impression of generalized vulnerability. Many policy-oriented researchers, even when they see self-sufficiency and adaptation, are unwilling to publish work highlighting refugees' economic capacities out of fear that this will cause them to be classed as economic migrants or will reduce funding for assistance programs.
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However, as political decentralization and devolution continue, responsibility for responding to refugees and asylum seekers is, de facto, being transferred to the local governments already charged with overseeing and spearheading community development. Although there are examples of cooperation among government officials across the range of departments and levels (e.g., interministerial committees, links between the army and the police)
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Accepting that displacement will continue means developing institutional mechanisms within the African context that treat it as a normal rather than truly exceptional phenomenon. This not only means coordinating emergency response institutions, but creating technically equipped research teams with ready funding that can be deployed rapidly to emergency situations and to areas where displaced populations are living.
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Report on Regional hearing for africa held in Cape town, South africa, 28 February-1 March. Geneva: Global Commission on International Migration.
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‘I know what you're doing', reflexivity and methods in forced migration studies. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference of the International Associa tion for the Study of Forced Migration.
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He is currently coordinating a post-graduate degree program in forced migration studies and co-directing a comparative project on migration and urban transformation in Johannesburg, Maputo, Nairobi, and Lubumbashi. He has testified to the South African Parliament, and was consulted for the South African Human Rights Commission and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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. These developments challenge the responses applied to social crises.
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The same considerations apply to social crises. Variable determining factors in the consideration of social conflicts are not always available at the time these occur.
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The first example concerns a natural crisis involving invasion by swarms of locusts in 2004. The second example discloses a social crisis relating to management of natural pasturage.
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In looking at the analysis of control of migratory locusts that is made by Mr. Fakaba Diakité, it is evident that "in locust control, as soon as you see them here (in the southern areas)
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In Mali the early warning system has developed to respond to needs linked to food security. The SAP "is based on permanent information collection concerning rainfall, crop evaluation, livestock, market prices, migration of populations,
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This approach is just as valid for natural as for social crises and can contribute to making early warning more effective because it documents phenomena over a longer period of time through qualitative and quantitative chronological series.
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The possible causes behind the origin of this conflict could be lack of preparation through preliminary studies of local management of power and/or failure to identify potential mechanisms and degrees of acceptable change, as well as their mode of operation. Conflict Concerning Management of Pasturage This example describes the clash between two Fulani communities; the clash concerned disputes regarding pasturage situated in the Inner Delta of the Niger River in Mali (the Niger Bend)
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In his approach, Maïga (2005) questions two fundamental aspects: first, the interactions between state law and customary law, and second, prospects for access to pasturage and the future of traditional chiefdoms in the context of decentralization (local government)
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Although intertwining of the school crisis and claims for democracy temporarily benefited both causes, delays in meeting students' claims became the source of recurring disruption in schools and colleges in urban settings in Mali. The role played by students in social change became a source of demands and blackmail whose disorderly manifestations paralyzed Malian towns on a sporadic and partial basis.
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Given the conclusions reached through the cases examined in this paper, which approaches will lead to advancing beyond practices and methods that are currently used? CONCLUSION: APPROACHES TO ADvANCINg bEyOND CURRENT METHODS AND PRACTICES Approaches to the anticipation of natural or social crises exist, but in the current context of Mali, very little investment has been made in this area.
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It should be preceded by sociological, anthropological, and ethnographic research studies in zones with recurrent conflicts. To go beyond these approaches, positive partnership in prevention should be emphasized.
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2 appeNDIX e WHO committees and is the chair of the committee called Strengthening Research Capability for Social Health Sciences for Tropical Disease Control in Geneva. He is also a member of UEPA (Union for the Study of Population in Africa)
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