Related events and conferences
Related events and conferences
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Climate displacement in East and West Africa: Insights from Dakar
UNHCR's Global Data Service convened a two-day workshop similar to that in Nairobi, Dakar, Senegal, focused on climate change and forced displacement in West Africa.
The workshop brought together experts from UN agencies, international organizations, and academic institutions to discuss innovative approaches to early warning and risk modelling. Participants shared insights on various initiatives, including UNHCR's grid-based risk modelling project CLIFDEW-GRID and early warning system project EWERS, DRC's WACAFI model, and Alliance Biodiversity CIAT's climate security hotspot analysis in the Liptako Gourma region. The workshop featured presentations on satellite data applications, humanitarian data management, and OCHA's role in anticipatory action.
Through collaborative discussions, participants identified opportunities for partnerships and data sharing, contributing valuable input to UNHCR's ongoing CLIFDEW-GRID project aimed at forecasting displacement risks with a special focus on climate change in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Climate displacement in East and West Africa: Insights from Nairobi
UNHCR's Global Data Service convened a two-day workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, focused on the intersection of climate change and forced displacement in East Africa. The workshop featured presentations and discussions on:
- UNHCR’s CLIFDEW-GRID Early Warning risk modelling of climate-induced forced displacement;
- The Alliance for Biodiversity’s data-driven climate and security research;
- Intergovernmental Authority on Development Climate Prediction and Application Centre’s (ICPAC) work on modelling disaster displacement risk;
- UNICEF’s framework and adaptations for informing climate action for children;
- The Danish Refugee Council’s methods of integrating satellite data along with traditional data sources for predicting displacement;
- UN-Habitat's work on investigating and managing sustainable development and climate risk towards durable solutions;
- The IOM’s initiative to geolocate the origin of climate-vulnerable IDPs;
- The UN Environment Programme’s work on disaster response.
The presentations and discussions offered an opportunity for representatives of these organizations to discuss data sources, methodologies and practical use cases for administering humanitarian resources for those displaced in the context of climate change. The workshop concluded with agreements to continue organizing meetings between participants and sharing resources.
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Climate displacement in East and West Africa: Insights from Dadaab
Members of UNHCR's Global Data Service Data Science Team engaged with the CLIFDEW-GRID project visited the Dadaab Refugee Complex to hold meetings and learn about the work being done on the ground. The team held a series of focus groups in the Ifo 2 Settlements with those living at the settlement who had arrived between 2022 and 2024. The groups consisted of approximately 30 women, then 30 men.
The focus group participants, most of whom came from Somalia, with some also from the Somali Region of Ethiopia and South Sudan, discussed the climate conditions of where they came from, the reasons for leaving their homes, and the process of arriving in Dadaab. The discussions offered insights into how the livelihoods of people in the region are being affected by irregularities in rainfall and desertification, which has made their mostly pastoral way of life increasingly difficult. This has been combined with increased security concerns due to the presence of the extremist group Al Shabaab in the region.
At the Dadaab offices, the team also met with the Senior Protection Officer and the Assistant Registration Officer to discuss historical and emerging trends of refugee flows to Dadaab and learned about how refugees are registered in the ProGres database, UNHCR’s registry of refugees and asylum seekers, and certain aspects of the data to be aware of when analyzing the data or incorporating it into predictive models.
The team met with protection officers and those managing water, health, infrastructure and education services to present the work being done on the CLIFDEW-GRID project. The data science team explained how they estimate the grid cell origin of those registered in the UNHCR ProGres database and how the model incorporates climate data into the predictions of forced displacement from these grid cells. The conversation focused on how predicting forced displacement from certain grid cells, such as those in southern Somalia, could help Dadaab operations better prepare for new arrivals.
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UN Data Strategy presentation: How predictive analytics help us understand drivers of climate-induced displacement
UNHCR's Data Science team joined a UN Data Strategy meeting to demonstrate how the organization is using different sources of data and predictive analytics to develop a risk index for climate-induced displacement at the country, regional, and grid-cell levels. Specifically, by combining data from UNHCR’s registration records on displaced populations, remote sensing information on variables such as precipitation and soil moisture, and other novel data sources, this UNHCR project aims to create a valuable predictive tool that not only anticipates displacement risks but also provides a nuanced understanding of vulnerability factors for proactive action.
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Presentation at Novo Nordisk Foundation Grant Challenge Workshop
The GDS Data Science Team presented the CLIFDEW-GRID project at the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Grant Challenge Workshop. The project’s objective is to develop a machine learning model for predicting the risk of forced displacement at the local level in East and West Africa in the context of climate change. The 15-minute presentation focused on the background and scope of the project as well as technical details. These include machine learning being utilized to more precisely locate the origin of refugees and asylum seekers and developing techniques for predicting the risk of forced displacement in the future. The workshop offered an opportunity to discuss these modelling techniques and network with other organizations that may partner with UNHCR in the future.
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Data for Peace: Leveraging data to foster lasting peace
The NYU Center on International Cooperation, with support from the Complex Risk Analytics Fund and its partners, hosted a hybrid conference with experts in the data for peacebuilding and prevention ecosystem to facilitate peer-to-peer exchange and leverage emerging technologies and data science methods to tackle the growing challenges across the humanitarian-development-peace and climate nexus globally. UNHCR presented its work on the CRAF’d-financed CLIFDEW-GRID project at the conference.
