Scientific due diligence for humanitarian disaster risk financing: A guide for data scientists and humanitarian practitioners

This guide was developed by the Drought Risk Finance Science Laboratory (DRiSL) to provide a tool for both scientists and humanitarian practitioners to aid responsible and effective use of scientific data and modelling in humanitarian decision-making.

The guide aims to provide an interface between the “providers” of data and models and humanitarian organisations and at-risk groups – the “users” of the models to take decisions – giving each group a better understanding of the other. It supports users to ensure due care is taken in the design of their data and analytics in their DRF systems, and helps providers to better understand what will be needed for their work to be applied responsibly and effectively to achieve humanitarian goals.

This guide advocates that all learning gathered during testing and validation of a DRF system are communicated clearly and openly to all stakeholders so that they can understand and evaluate the system. It is an important principle of DRF that those who design the system are accountable and responsive to those who will ultimately rely on it.