Madagascar is vulnerable to climatic and geophysical hazards, particularly flooding and tropical storms. Data review is ongoing for Madagascar’s open data sharing platform, ResilienceMada, to provide valuable information for users.
Understanding Risks in Madagascar
Madagascar is highly vulnerable to climatic and geophysical hazards. In 2013, the impact of 15 tropical disturbances caused more than $250 million worth of damage to the Union of Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zanzibar collectively. In fact, the region’s largest island, Madagascar, remains one of the most economically and geographically impacted countries in the world from natural disasters. In 2015, over 100,000 people were affected by flooding and the after-effects of tropical storms Chedza and Fundi. As a result, more than 70,000 people lost their homes.
Sharing Data
Madagascar is an active stakeholder of the SWIO RAFI project. The Southwest Indian Ocean Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (SWIO RAFI) project seeks to improve understanding of disaster risks as well as to increase the financial resilience of the Indian Ocean Islands. Activities include: (i) capacity building and knowledge exchange on disaster risk assessment and financing; (ii) development of regional risk information databases; and (iii) development of preliminary catastrophe risk profiles.
A key component of SWIO RAFI is to develop risk profiles at national level. This will require a large collection of geographic datasets. Therefore, 1) existing datasets will need to be made available, 2) when there are no existing datasets, new information will be collected, particularly on exposure 3) new information such as hazard zones will also be generated in the risk assessment process. Many of these datasets can be used for other purposes, including sectoral planning, by making them easily accessible to key stakeholders. To achieve this ambition, the Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI) through the African Disaster Risk Financing program is implemented in Madagascar.
To ensure the best values out of risk data sets, a web-based geospatial data sharing platform (GeoNode) has been developed in Madagascar under the lead of key DRM counterparts (CPGU and BNGRC). The NGO Habaka Innovation Hub has been selected to support the development of the GeoNode platform and build Government capacity to host and maintain the platform in the long run.