There is no longer any reasonable doubt that the climate is changing. It is no longer a distant possibility but a current reality. Projections of the impact this will have on global climate, and therefore on our society, economy, and wider environment, is becoming more and more refined. Timing of seasons may change, frequency and severity of floods and tropical cyclones combined with sea level rise are increasing. For cities across the world climate change has become one of the defining challenges for policymakers, industry and civil society.
Using geospatial Information technologies to support this enormous task allows looking at and analysing various Climate change scenarios in relation to already complex spatial planning challenges. Location intelligence as well geo-analytics will help to better understand impacts of climate change scenarios on the urban environment. As a result such new insights allow for better policy and decision making to build toward a climate resilient city in the longer term.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) would therefor like to support a range of activities that generate and nurture the innovative application of spatial information. ADB wants to establish an Spatial Application Facility (SAF) that on the one hand holds a spatial and socioeconomic baseline data repository relevant for sustainable and resilient infrastructure development and on the other hand allows to visualize, analyse, query and map the impacts of climate change induced severe weather events such as flooding from intense rain and storm surges from tropical cyclones. This scalable cloud-based system holds the relevant baseline data for three cities in Vietnam (Vinh Yen, Ha Giang and Hue) and two cities in Bangladesh (Bagherat and Patuakhali) and allows end-users to work (visualize, query and map) with the data through an easy to access online application. An interface with Data Integration and Analyses System (DIAS) hosted by the University of Tokyo will ensure on the one hand that the baseline data from Vietnam inside ADB-SAF can be consumed by (or exported to) the DIAS in order for it to perform climate change and disaster risk assessment modelling, and on the other hand the interface will be able to visualize the output (model result) of the DIAS modelling in the ADB-SAF in the form of a map.
The main objectives of the assignment are:
- (i) Creation of baseline spatial and socioeconomic data repository at the regional and city scale,
which can be accessible online; - (ii) Development of a technology platform (ADB-SAF) that enables climate change and disaster risk
simulation and data visualization, and; - (iii) Provide input to knowledge products related to use of spatial information for climate change and
disaster risk assessment and resilient infrastructure development.
It will cover two countries
- (i) Vietnam (three cities; Vinh Yen, Ha Giang, and Hue under green cities program) for data
collection and extraction from Earth Observation (EO) satellite data, which will be used for climate
change and disaster risk assessment, and; - (ii) Bangladesh (two cities; Bagerhat and Patuakhali) for data collection from recently completed TA-
89135. The data will be provided by ADB and contains layers of detailed urban land use, road, drainage that was extracted from satellite imagery and other layers. This information will be harmonized and integrated in the ADB-SAF.
The following sections describe the approach to our services to establish the baseline data repository as well as the development of the innovative ADB-SAF to ultimately demonstrate its application as upfront resource for resilient infrastructure planning.
