STRENGTHENING RISK DATA FOR URBAN RESILIENCE IN BANGLADESH Building a resilient future AT A GLANCE Country: Bangladesh Risks: Cyclones, Floods, Earthquakes Dhaka 3d rendering. Credit: Naeblys. GFDRR Areas of Engagement: Scaling up city resilience, promoting resilient infrastructure Over much of the past decade, Bangladesh’s BANGLADESH’S FIRST EVER development prospects have been buoyed by OPEN SOURCE GEOSPATIAL DATA a record of strong and sustained economic COLLECTION AND SHARING growth. Yet even as the country’s bustling urban PLATFORM areas, including the capital city Dhaka, have helped fuel that growth, rapid and unplanned Until recently, government agencies as well as the private development is leaving millions of people more sector in Bangladesh had been producing vast amounts of geospatial data, but largely without the ability to share these vulnerable not only to natural hazards, including data seamlessly without delay. Accordingly, a key focus for cyclones, floods, and earthquakes, but also to GFDRR’s engagement has been to provide technical and the impacts of climate change. financial support toward the development and sustainability of GeoDASH, Bangladesh’s first ever open source geospatial data In response to this challenge, Bangladesh collection and sharing platform. Ss of the end of fiscal year has embarked on a comprehensive urban 2020, nearly 3,000 users representing over 50 public, private, and civil society organizations have shared data, making resilience agenda. The government strongly available 740 datasets from road network maps and building recognizes the importance of risk data for footprints to the location of water, gas, and utilities in a secure informing and driving that agenda. Under the platform. All of these datasets are available to the public in a Japan–World Bank Program for Mainstreaming widely usable format. Disaster Risk Management (DRM), GFDRR has been supporting national efforts to strengthen Government agencies in Bangladesh, including in the city the infrastructure for collecting, sharing, and of Dhaka, are now leveraging the GeoDASH platform to analyzing risk data. reduce duplication and minimize costs in their geospatial data collection efforts. The Dhaka North and South City Corporations, the Capital Development Authority, and the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, for instance, have agreed to utilize the platform to collaborate on mapping roads as well as on gathering data on building footprints, water supply, and sewerage facilities. RESULTS IN RESILIENCE SERIES INFORMING RESILIENCE PLANNING AND INVESTMENTS IN BOTH URBAN AND RURAL AREAS At the same time, government agencies are also making use of GeoDASH’s web application, which enables users to Nearly 3,000 visualize and analyze the data to inform their resilience planning. For example, through this application, Bangladesh’s Local Government Engineering Department has been using geospatial layers from the Department of Disaster Users representing over 50 Management’s multi-hazard risk and vulnerability assessment to produce cyclone risk maps for critical infrastructure. These maps will, in turn, inform its investment plans for cyclone shelters in both urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. organizations have shared data on the GeoDASH To ensure that the government of Bangladesh is able to sustainably utilize GeoDASH in its resilience efforts, GFDRR platform, making available has also been supporting a comprehensive training program for officials on how to use and administer the platform. As a testament to its commitment, the national government, 740 datasets Dhaka. Photo: Meinzahn which manages GeoDASH, has integrated the platform into its National Spatial Data Infrastructure policy. ALIGNED WITH GFDRR’S URBAN RESILIENCE PORTFOLIO IN BANGLADESH GFDRR’s support for strengthening risk data is one of a range of urban resilience engagements with the government of Bangladesh. For instance, under the Japan–World Bank LESSONS Despite increasing Program for Mainstreaming DRM, technical assistance is LEARNED interest among both currently being provided toward developing a strategic public and private environmental assessment of Dhaka, now in its final stages. sector stakeholders in Dhaka to exchange The assessment, which makes use of the data layers uploaded critical geospatial data, many had in GeoDASH, will integrate environmental concerns into the hesitated to do so, in part because of government’s ongoing plans to enhance resilience in Dhaka— privacy and security concerns. Accordingly, such as retrofitting public buildings and updating land use plans and building codes. GeoDASH was established in line with best practices in data privacy and security; for Furthermore, GFDRR has partnered with the World Bank on the instance, it allows organizations to utilize $173 million IDA-funded Bangladesh Urban Resilience Project, the sharing platform while limiting other a multisectoral disaster risk reduction program that has been users’ ability to see more sensitive data informed by geospatial data analysis through GeoDASH. The uploaded to the platform. project drew from Japan’s experiences in (i) formulating DRM policies; (ii) establishing and operationalizing emergency operations centers; and (iii) developing ICT infrastructure for multi-stakeholder engagements in metropolitan cities, which were shared with the project’s technical experts in a technical deep dive implemented by the Japan–World Bank Program. In addition, Japan’s experiences in the continuous updating and enhancing of regulations, institutional frameworks, financing, “If Bangladesh is to thrive, we must make our cities and staff capacity, following disasters, and the enabling DRM more resilient, and we must do so quickly. Through this policies which allow for building code enforcement were project, we expect to have an impact on the long-term applied through the project to achieve improved preparedness disaster resilience of the urban centers of Bangladesh.” and resilient investments. —Abdul Latif Helaly, Chief Engineer, Capital Development Authority (RAJUK) and Project Director, Bangladesh Urban Resilience Project Contact: Swarna Kazi November 2020 Skazi1@worldbank.org www.gfdrr.org