Attachments
1. INTRODUCTION
The African Risk Capacity’s (ARC) Africa RiskView (ARV) tool combines Earth Observation (EO) data with population vulnerability data to provide an early-warning model that measures food insecurity and estimates response costs, enabling decision-makers to plan and respond quickly and efficiently to drought stresses. The partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the EO4SD CR cluster allowed enhancements to the ARV tool with the previously unavailable essential climate variables.
Following extensive consultation and engagement, the EO4SD CR cluster provides monitoring on soil moisture, which helps inform soil water holding capacity estimates, and new datasets on precipitation measurements, which can be used in drought monitoring, and to further improve the ARV tool. In addition to the contributions to ARC’s ARV tool, the EO4SD CR cluster also supports validation activities associated with ARC’s flood service – the ARC Flood Extent Depiction dataset (AFED).