Code for Resilience Blog

• Tanzania Cfr
  2016-01-30 00:00:00 +0000

  Tanzania Cfr

  Dar es Salaam and Stone Town are the two primary cities of Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, with populations of 5.5 million and 150,000 respectively. Each of these cities and their country have unique challenges and hazards. Dar es Salaam for instance is challenged by bi-annual flooding, impacting many thousands of its citizens every year. In response to this, the World Bank, GFDRR, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and the Red Cross are supporting the , Buni Innovation Hub, Dar es Salaam City Council, Ardhi University and the University of Dar es Salaam with a community mapping for flood resilience project, Ramani Huria. In coordinating all of these actors, Ramani Huria has leveraged the skills of over 100 community members, 150 students, collecting data in the most flood prone neighbourhoods of Dar es Salaam, making maps and underlying data freely available for Dar es Salaam.

• Reducing Disaster Risk through Hydromet Technology in Haiti
  2015-10-14 00:00:00 +0000

  Reducing Disaster Risk through Hydromet Technology in Haiti

  Hydro-meteorological hazards (tropical cyclones, thunderstorms, hailstorms, tornados, floods and drought) have a significant impact in Haiti’s development. More than 96% of the country’s territory is at risk from these hazards. The country’s economy is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, which produces more than 25% of the national GDP and is the main source of revenue for rural households. However, only 1% of farmers use irrigation, and understanding rainfall is crucial for the vast majority of farmers to grow crops used as their primary source of food and income.

  

• ANNOUNCING THE CODE FOR RESILIENCE FINALISTS
  2015-05-21 00:00:00 +0000

  ANNOUNCING THE CODE FOR RESILIENCE FINALISTS

  Washington, May 23 2014 - The World Bank today announced the Finalists of the Code For Resilience Online Innovation Challenge, a competition to surface locally-driven innovations that address global disaster resilience challenges.

  “Natural disasters affected two billion people, most of whom have access to a mobile phone, between 2000–2012,” said Francis Ghesquiere, manager of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) at the World Bank. “Mobile phones and other technologies can be leveraged to help citizens and officials alike to improve resilience through data-driven and evidence-based decision making. These Finalists represent the most creative and promising examples of this potential.”

• INNOVATIVE APPS FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION WIN GLOBAL ATTENTION
  2014-06-30 00:00:00 +0000

  INNOVATIVE APPS FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION WIN GLOBAL ATTENTION

  Story highlights:

  • The Code for Resilience global initiative connects technologists with mentors and sector specialists to create tech-based tools that help reduce disaster risk.
  • Three teams won grand prizes for building innovative disaster resilience apps.
  • The winners have the opportunity to pitch their tools to over 800 experts at the Understanding Risk Forum in London and to participate in a study tour with major technology companies.
• CODE FOR RESILIENCE GEARING UP FOR HACKATHONS IN FOUR MORE COUNTRIES IN ASIA
  2014-04-30 00:00:00 +0000

  CODE FOR RESILIENCE GEARING UP FOR HACKATHONS IN FOUR MORE COUNTRIES IN ASIA

  Hackers from Peshawar, Pakistan, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, have joined the Code for Resilience movement by putting their technical skills to use against dozens of locally identified disaster resilience challenges.

• DES ÉTUDIANTS HAÏTIENS DÉVELOPPENT UNE APPLICATION POUR SAUVER DES VIES
  2014-04-28 00:00:00 +0000

  DES ÉTUDIANTS HAÏTIENS DÉVELOPPENT UNE APPLICATION POUR SAUVER DES VIES

  Pour se préparer aux désastres naturels, avoir l’information nécessaire mise à jour est essentiel. Dans le cas d’Haïti, vulnérable aux tremblements de terre, cyclones et inondations, c’est une question de vie ou de mort.

  Quelles sont les communes plus à risques ? Quelle est l’infrastructure en place pour répondre à une catastrophe ? Il est presque impossible de prendre la bonne décision sans avoir des chiffres en main.

  Jusqu’à présent cette information, actualisée et évaluée chaque année, n’était disponible que sur format papier et il était difficile pour la Direction de la Protection Civile d’actualiser l’information en temps réel et de la visualiser rapidement.

• MENTOR SUPPORT AVAILABLE FOR CODE FOR RESILIENCE ONLINE INNOVATION CHALLENGE PARTICIPANTS - A Q&A WITH MENTOR TRISHAN DE LANEROLLE
  2014-03-12 00:00:00 +0000

  MENTOR SUPPORT AVAILABLE FOR CODE FOR RESILIENCE ONLINE INNOVATION CHALLENGE PARTICIPANTS - A Q&A WITH MENTOR TRISHAN DE LANEROLLE

  On March 14, participants in the Code for Resilience Online Innovation Challenge become eligible to be paired with mentors—experts in various aspects of technology, business development and design who will offer input and feedback on app development. Trishan de Lanerolle, one of the Code for Resilience mentors, and Project Director for the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Project (www.hfoss.org), a National Science Foundation-funded collaborative program between Trinity College, Connecticut College and Wesleyan University, weighs in on why he’s involved.

• CODING FOR COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS
  2014-02-28 00:00:00 +0000

  CODING FOR COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS

  It was only three years ago that a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan. I still remember vividly the horror of watching in disbelief as live television footage captured the tsunami rapidly moving inland. I was living abroad at the time, and tried frantically to get through to my family in Tokyo, not knowing the extent of the damage there.

  According to official reports, of the approximately 18,000 deaths as a direct result of this catastrophe only 125 people were killed during the earthquake itself. The vast majority of lives lost were due to the tsunami that followed.

• IN BANGLADESH, HACKING SOLUTIONS FOR WATER SUPPLY, SANITATION, AND DISASTER RESILIENCE
  2014-02-13 00:00:00 +0000

  IN BANGLADESH, HACKING SOLUTIONS FOR WATER SUPPLY, SANITATION, AND DISASTER RESILIENCE

  Code for Resilience will partner with the Water Hackathon App Fest Bangladesh to bring a focus on disaster resilience to this water and sanitation focused hackahthon in Dhaka on February 14-15.

• HACKING FOR DISASTER RESILIENCE IN PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN
  2014-02-06 00:00:00 +0000

  HACKING FOR DISASTER RESILIENCE IN PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN

  In Pakistan, natural disasters like earthquakes and monsoon floods claim thousands of lives each year. Millions more are affected, and billions of Pakistani rupees worth of infrastructure is damaged as a result of such calamities. Take, for example, the floods of July-August 2010 that affected 20 million people and claimed several thousand lives. Or the earthquake of October 2005 that killed almost 78,000 people and disrupted the lives of 2.5 million more..

  Advanced technologies that can help predict calamities like earthquakes and floods, and enable people at risk to take precautionary measures in time. For a developing country like Pakistan, this is not a job the government can tackle alone. Every citizen has to step forward to build disaster resilient communities. With the right information made available at the right time, we can reduce the impact of these disasters on our society.

• HACKATHONS CHALLENGE ASIA’S TECH-SAVVY INNOVATORS TO STRENGTHEN DISASTER RESILIENCE
  2014-02-03 00:00:00 +0000

  HACKATHONS CHALLENGE ASIA’S TECH-SAVVY INNOVATORS TO STRENGTHEN DISASTER RESILIENCE

  During monsoon season in Southern Leyte province of the Philippines, heavy rains pound down, flooding local waterways. As the earth saturates, soil and rocks on barren hillsides give way, in some cases triggering deadly landslides.

  One landslide in 2006 claimed the lives of some 2,000 people. Over 200 of the victims were children who became trapped in a school after it was buried by fast-moving mud and boulders. Teachers were able to send text messages for help, but the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the school were unknown and the rescue crews were unable to reach the students in time.

• CODE FOR RESILIENCE NEEDS YOU! GET INVOLVED IN BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS
  2013-12-23 00:00:00 +0000

  CODE FOR RESILIENCE NEEDS YOU! GET INVOLVED IN BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS

  As we celebrate the holiday season and assemble our wish list for the New Year, the Code for Resilience Team is thinking about innovative ways to strengthen the resilience of communities most vulnerable to natural disasters.

  And we’ve got some ideas about how you can help.

  Last month we launched CodeForResilience.org, a project supported by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and ICT Unit (TWICT), and Code for Japan. The project aims to increase the availability of “civic technologies”—or ICT-based tools built by, with, and for local communities—that can help strengthen preparedness for and mitigation of the risks of natural hazards like floods, earthquakes, cyclones and droughts.

• BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS THROUGH OPEN INNOVATION
  2013-12-17 00:00:00 +0000

  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.