THE UN ECONOMIC and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) has announced the launch of an online portal to track various hazard hotspots as well as climate adaptation efforts across the Asia Pacific region, featuring up-to-date information from over 50 countries including the Philippines.
In a virtual briefing Monday, UN ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary for Sustainable Development Kaveh Zahedi described the “Risk and Resilience Portal” (RRP) as a “one-stop shop” that supports risk-informed policymaking across the region.
“(It) enables member-countries to identify hazard hotspots; calculate losses on the various hazards and climate change scenarios; (and) estimate the specific costs of adaptation; and highlight potential priority adaptation (measures),” he said.
The portal also has a “decision support system” which provides an analysis of the disaster risk stories of five countries: Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Myanmar, Mongolia and Armenia.
“(The portal) bridges the science and policy gaps that currently exist from the lack of translational science. Through the integration of data from multiple existing and validated sources, the portal is a one-stop shop to ensure that the vast array of scientific info on hazards, climate change, social, economic and health data can be analyzed in a way that can be used by policy makers, decision makers and development researchers to make efficient risk-informed decisions that span across multiple sectors,” said UN ESCAP Economic Affairs Officer Madhurima Sarkar-Swaisgood.
On the portal’s website, UN ESCAP said that the database “aims to strengthen the capacity of countries in Asia and the Pacific to mitigate the impacts of cascading risks on the achievement of the sustainable development goals.”
Other groups that worked on the RRP include the UN Institute for Training and Research and United Nations Satellite Centre.
The online portal can be accessed at https://rrp.unescap.org/.
The RRP’s launch took place on the first day of the UN ESCAP’s virtual Disaster Resilience Week which will run until Aug. 27. — Angelica Y. Yang