Climate Communication by The Thin Page
Pitch
Strengthening communities with enhanced access to information and promote their adaptation with conscious participation.
Description
Summary
Climate change is real.The quickest response to climate change shall be Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). All stakeholders working in climate change and disaster are struggling to disseminate updated information and knowledge to the communities. Most of the technological tools that can ease the understanding are focused to the center and communities are left behind with the general information; which is not sufficient in the current changing context.GIS is such tool, which can expand the horizon of information that can be delivered to the receiver. But such tools are extremely technical and are not accessible to the local communities from where the information is collected.
All disaster related information that is generated at community level is not reflected to the same level; which makes the community unclear about the ongoing changes in their surroundings.This tool to strengthen communities towards adaptation to climate change could be information itself. Communities are randomly participating in adaptation interventions at different level and sectors. What if communities can access the simplified information from experts? They can consciously participate in the adaptation process.
The most convenient communication that already exists is the mobile communication technology, which has already breakthrough the fundamentals of development. Such technology can play a pivotal role in scientific outcomes sharing in a commonly understandable form for DRR. The overall concept is to enhance information sharing by promoting web/mobile-based application and empowering community’s adaptation activities. At the same time provide a common platform to experts and local enumerators to simultaneously feed information. This will help to update and maintain the information from top to bottom and vice versa in an effective way. In conclusion, this project will contribute to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction through access to information.
Category of the action
Mitigation/Adaptation, Changing public attitudes about climate change
What actions do you propose?
The project has two key components i.e. mobile application development and its field based verification, so key activities are based on these two key components.
· Review of existing written literatures and data availability
Based on objectives, different written literatures will be reviewed and current status; gaps and actions will be identified. Similarly, disaster data will be reviewed so that the disaster database can be translated to the community in their understandable language.
· Mobile based application development
This mobile-based application will use two types of data. Foremost will be the historical disaster data sourced from government of Nepal. The data will be presented in a simplified version in application. This application will have simplified and user-friendly interface, low data transfer rate and offline data input capabilities. The latter will be real time information updated from the community (at present project site). The feature will be developed in mobile-based application so that community facilitator can update the status of ongoing and completed climate change adaptation activities related to disaster at their community. Along with this, the same person will update recent disaster incidents. Once the data/information will be updated to the central database, it will be accessible from any part of the world after verification from the administrator. The mobile-based application will use the disaster data available from Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of Nepal. The data will be verified, scrutinized and selected for the purpose of the mobile-based application. The mobile based technology will be mobile application having an Android version or above operating system. The mobile application will be made in such a way that, retrieval and real time input from the field will be possible. The mobile application will go under continuous process of improvement.
· Empowerment of community members
The key challenge as well as the strength of this project is the community members (Local Club/Community User Groups/Community Forestry User Group) who are left behind in the current development process. Community members from selected VDC will be invited to participate in the disaster information-sharing workshop where selected members can actively participate and lead the process of information sharing and retrieval based on mobile platform. The members will be trained to capable to use the mobile-based application for updating and retrieval of the information. The targeted participates are members of local club, community user groups, youth club, mothers club and community forestry user group, school teacher, youth clubs. Altogether 100/100 community members will be trained over the project period. The participants will be selected in heterogeneous way assuring the participation of women, youth, marginalized and disadvantage groups.
Based on the training assessment and performance, one person from each ward will be selected having android mobile and will play a key role of disaster data retrieval and update from that ward.
Along with this Ward/VDC members will also be empowered on the use of mobile application. VDC secretary and ward president will be trained on the use of mobile application. Similarly, field based verification and assessment of mobile application will be done. Capacity building cum field verification and assessment will be done twice during the project period.
· DRR Workshop
DRR workshop will be done at VDC local level in order to identify the status of historical disaster, ongoing and completed disaster risk reduction activities. This workshop is essential to promote participation of communities and dissemination of the activities at local and regional level. One DRR workshop will be organized comprising of local stakeholders and community people having no more than 50 participants.
· Institutional collaboration
VDC as the local government will be promoted to lead the collaboration further including all major agencies, organizations, user groups etc. that are stakeholders in adaptation planning process.
· Launch Program
Upon completion of mobile application, it will be launched through a public event organized in Kathmandu. The event will be organized among the press and relevant stakeholders to promote the used at wider scale.
Who will take these actions?
This project will be developed and implemented in close collaboration with government departments, INGOs, NGOS and CBOs. Primarily, The Thin Page Pvt. Ltd will work in the development and implementation of this project,
The Thin Page Pvt. Ltd
The Thin Page is a research and development cum consulting and capacity building institution based in Kathmandu dedicated to assisting the private and public sectors in environmental issues. The Thin Page provides expert services to help resolve the issues of environment to with the ultimate goal of quality outcome. The vision of The Thin Page is to become pioneer service company through its quality, capacity and leadership.The This Page’s skilled team of professionals provide comprehensive service on climate change data management, verification and module development in this project.
Where will these actions be taken?
Although most of the actions needed for application and web development, but the verification is the key due to variability of the climatic condition, geology and geography of Nepal. To make this application applicable all over the Nepal, will be tested and verified from Mountain, Hill and Terai region. The district and location for verification will be identified through stakeholders consultation.
What are other key benefits?
The project has following key benefits;
- Provide piloting wireframe and source code of the web/mobile- based application.
- Empower the selected communities to use web/mobile-based application to regularly update and retrieve disaster related information in their community.
- Enhance capability of relevant stakeholders (Central/Local government, I/NGOs, media etc.) for information sharing and dissemination through web/mobile based geospatial tool
- Strengthen the communities with enhanced access to information and promote their adaptation with conscious participation
- Support organizations by enhancing the planning process in Local Adaptation Plan for Action, DRR and adaptation planning.
What are the proposal’s costs?
Total cost of this proposal is USD 23,540.00. The detail breakdown is as follows; (All costs are in USD)
Development and enabling cost including field visit: 9000.00
Office Expanses: 3000.00
Salary and Staffing:10000.00
Contingency (7%):1540.00
Time line
The project will run over a period of one year and proposed timeline is as below,
- Review of Literature and historical data collection, refinement and proofing- 2nd Months
- Identification and selection of attributes, features and outlook-3rd Month
- Empowerment of community members and 1st outlook of web/mobile based application development -4th Month
- Ground verification of the application- 5th and 6th Month
- Improvement in web/mobile application- 6th and 7th Month
- 2nd outlook of web/mobile based application development-8th Month
- Testing and Verifying of web/mobile based application- 8th and 9th Month.
- Final web/mobile based application development- 10th Month
- DRR workshop- 11th Month
- Dissemination of information and application-11th and 12th Month
- Stakeholders Meeting: In each months over a year
Related proposals
NA
References
https://www.facebook.com/thethinpage?ref=hl
https://twitter.com/TheThinPage
By:
The Thin Page
