Climate Hazards Center, RCMRD, and SERVIR Facilitate Climate-informed Decision Making in Eastern and Southern Africa
This post was written by Juliet Way-Henthorne, Greg Husak, Shraddhanand Shukla and Denis Macharia
Project History: Scope and Goals
Since July 2016, the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazards Center (CHC) has worked with the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) through support from the SERVIR-Applied Sciences Team (AST) program to empower technical professionals in key regions of southern and eastern Africa by utilizing various methods of capacity building, transfers of technology, and an “empower-the-trainers” approach. To briefly summarize the project—which will end in June 2019—the primary outcome of employing a variety of techniques to best equip trainees to integrate Earth observation (EO) information and geospatial technologies into their climate services to regional decision makers has been largely successful. Additionally, the project allows the CHC to further its own mission of protecting the lives and livelihoods of at-risk communities through hands-on trainings and demonstrations of CHC tools and techniques that allow for early warning as it relates to food security and climate. Knowledge sharing builds a wider network of capable climate service providers, which, in turn, creates a ripple effect, as these trainees share new resources and skills with decision-making stakeholders in the region.
Obtaining publicly accessible, analysis-ready EO data is challenging for decision makers across the developing world, as the ability to transform data to workable information is often a critically missing link. Data sets and models can be applied to inform food security and water resource-related decisions, helping to improve monitoring and forecasting of droughts, water availability, and climatic conditions. However, without knowledge of how to access or understand this information, these valuable data sets and models go underused.
To combat this challenge, SERVIR-AST and the CHC collaborated with SERVIR eastern and southern Africa hub at RCMRD to co-host this series of regional workshops in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. These trainings focused on enabling local and national climate service providers to confidently and effectively utilize such data sets and tools, ultimately allowing these key individuals to make better-informed decisions.
Regional Workshops:
The first workshop, which served primarily as a framing workshop through which to gauge climate service providers ’ needs, was held in Nairobi, Kenya between September 12th and 15th, 2017. The workshop’s location was strategically chosen as a base for local attendees who represented a variety of agencies focused on different sectors of agricultural development, relief effort, and crop insurance, including Kenya Forest Services (KFS Hqs), the World Food Programme (WFP), and IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC). Attendees were drawn from RCMRD’s mandated countries—the parameters of which aided in selecting all workshop locations. By beginning with workshops focused on a local scale before gradually building outward to incorporate more regions, the CHC was able to give an overview of several web services and case studies to further refine training materials. This introductory workshop also demonstrated the needs of a typical user of data sets and models to best assess the needs of participating technical professionals.
The second workshop (held between January 30th and February 2nd, 2018, in Dar Es Salam, Tanzania) of year-2 of the AST project trained partners in web applications to access climate and hydrologic data sets and demonstrated how to apply this information to generate seasonal climate scenarios, agricultural drought monitoring, water-resource management, and index insurance. The next workshop (held between September 4th and 7th, 2018 in Lusaka, Zambia) focused on further enhancing climate services in the region.
Training events showcased how to access and use analysis-ready EOs, such as the CHC’s Infrared Precipitation with Station Data (CHIRPS), as well as tools like the Early Warning Explorer and ClimateSERV and modeled data from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network Land Data Assimilation System. Exposure to these workshop training materials resulted in use cases across countries and disciplines, with users applying these resources to their own decision-making needs.
A workshop participant noted that they had “been able to apply the skills gained. In January, together with colleagues, we were able to generate scenarios of seasonal rainfall for Malawi for the remainder of the season.”
These trainings then culminated in the enhanced capacity of over twenty agrometeorological technical professionals to better use EO data to address water resources and agricultural decisions in Africa. In addition, several participants discussed the future training of colleagues, which exemplifies the “empower-the-trainers” approach, as well as the increased impact and reach of these workshops.
One participant stated, “I am using some of the data sets introduced [during the training] in my day-to-day climate analysis, including forecasting. In addition, I have shared the tools with my colleague, who works in the agro-climate section, so that they can use the information from these tools to advise farmers and the ministry.”
CHC Project Expectations and Predicted Outcomes:
Through the continued collaboration of the CHC, RCMRD, and SERVIR-eastern and southern Africa, we are able to provide critical guidance to those with the direct, immediate ability to provide much-needed climate information to decision makers, often at crucial and timely moments. By offering such trainings, data becomes relevant, readily applicable information that better informs food security and water resource-related decisions. As one trainee wrote, “The training has equipped participants with new skills to process hydro-climate information for decision making, it is useful, relevant, and important.”
Working directly with partners in Africa has highlighted the need and potential for EOs in eastern and southern Africa. Throughout these trainings, we have seen technical professionals from national and regional met and hydrologic agencies using data and techniques acquired through this project, and we understand that the information is being used to inform decisions about water resources and agriculture. Helping those professionals acquire these tools and seeing monitoring techniques improve as they help to better assess the conditions on the ground is both invigorating and instructive, as such growth is the direct result of this project. As the project nears its final stage, we aim to incorporate and translate the feedback from all previous trainings into instructions to ensure that the framework best targets the needs of its participants. With this objective in mind, we believe that trainees will be better equipped, both in skills and resources, to access and apply these EOs with confidence.
The value of these trainings cannot be overstated, as they benefit not only decision makers and key stakeholders, but also the CHC itself. Constructive feedback allows the CHC to evolve its training methods and content, creating a cycle of betterment that will ultimately reach a vast audience of eager and engaged climate service providers and decision makers. As such, the capabilities and tools of the CHC will have a greater impact, equipping people in the region with the skills necessary to access critical data sets and monitoring techniques. Additionally, the CHC gains invaluable face-to-face time with key stakeholders at regional and national levels. While currently in Year-3 of the project, continued feedback means that through the remainder of the project, participating technical professionals will receive training that has been tested and then altered to meet the trainees’ primary needs. Such activities that connect technical professionals to the CHC’s tools and techniques speaks to the lasting legacy that the Center intends to create.
The benefits of such trainings span the breadth of the Climate Hazards Center’s widespread network of affiliates and partners. Denis Macharia, Weather and Climate Lead of SERVIR E&SA and CHC’s primary collaborator at RCMRD, states that “Data and skills are the two most critical needs of a hydrometeorologist in order to successfully accomplish his or her duties. In our region, accessing data can be a challenge, and when it is possible, still requires expertise. Our partnership with UCSB and hydromet services agencies in the E&SA regions addresses these challenges quite remarkably. In the last 5 years, the UCSB team has produced a consistent rainfall data set and recently, an analogous temperature data set. Both data sets support analyses that are proving useful in addressing developmental challenges in the E&SA countries. The partnership is also providing key skills that are necessary to realizing maximum potential in the use of the data sets, training technical users in different applied skills like climate seasonal scenarios development and hydrological modeling. SERVIR will continue to ensure that data and skills gained so far are sustained over the long term and that agencies in the region continue to use these to inform decisions made by various stakeholders to address developmental challenges experienced in different sectors.”
This figure shows where the research in today's post contributes to the Feed the Future Results Framework
For further reading on this project, please view the following articles courtesy of SERVIR GLOBAL, RCMRD, and NASA Applied Sciences Program:
https://rcmrd.org/regional-training-workshop-on-applied-hydro-climate-services-in-zambia
