BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS THROUGH OPEN INNOVATION
Natural disasters affected the lives of over 2 billion people—more than a quarter of the world’s population—in the first decade of this century alone. Together, hazards like tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts and floods set the global economy back nearly US$ 1 trillion in damage to lives, infrastructure, and livelihoods.
One way to build community resilience to natural disasters is by opening the door to greater collaboration between the technology and disaster risk management (DRM) communities. Code for Resilience, a project of the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), aims to do just that.
Through a series of in-person and virtual events, Code for Resilience will team up developers and sector experts to leverage existing and new technologies that can strengthen ex ante disaster risk management efforts including risk identification and transfer, and disaster preparedness.
The resulting “civic technologies”—or information and communication technology (ICT)-based tools built by, with and for local communities—will help improve communities’ ability to identify, reduce the risks from, and prepare for major natural disasters.
The World Bank is now identifying DRM problem statements in need of innovative ICT-“hacks” using mobile phones, geospatial tools, gamification, open data, social networks, and hardware tools. Watch this site for updates to the Problems page, and register to comment on existing problem statements and to suggest your own.