Digital inclusion of flood affected communities

River floods affect the vulnerable communities living on the riverine islands in North West Bangladesh. The professional and the responding community implement preparedness and response activities to avoid loss of lives and protect livelihoods. Cordaid determined and clustered the information needs of these decision makers during the 2014 floods by conducting and coding 37 semi-structured interviews and three focus group discussions.

Cordaid mapped the available data sets on the needs as a function of time and identified data gaps, most notably the lack of timely, sufficiently granular and geospatial data. Cordaid identified three ways to address these by leveraging ICT to engage with and empower flood affected communities.

Mobile Services For Flood Early Warning

First of all, a Coordinated Data Scramble and data governance among the many organizations involved is a very effective way to reach a higher level of coordination in the data collection process, avoiding duplicates and promoting coherence.

Secondly, data at household level can be collected during and after the flood with an easy-to-use app by equipping with a smartphone and training volunteers and government officials.

Thirdly, a geospatial sharing dashboard can be used to feedback the collected data to the responding and professional community. Cordaid have piloted a first prototype of the app and dashboard to collect and display baseline and post 2015 flood data and Cordaid will demonstrate the prototype alongside the poster.