Data in Emergencies - El Niño Open Science Initiative (DIEM-eNOSI)

IN13A-04 Data in Emergencies - El Niño Open Science Initiative (DIEM-eNOSI)

AGU – American Geophysical Union 2023

Author: Nathan Morrow

Data in emergencies (DIEM) is an initiative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). High frequency risk, livelihood, wellbeing, and food security indicators are collected in more than forty emergency-affected countries. Beginning in 2021, many countries have more that 10-rounds of data collection at national and increasingly sub-national levels. Nearly 400,000 households surveys have been collected to create representative estimates for more than 350 spatial administrative units. See https://data-in-emergencies.fao.org .

Open science is becoming the standard for publicly-funded research. The United States and the European Union have made efforts to update their open science policies to ensure publicly funded research is made free with immediate and equitable access. This project seeks to promote open science based on the public investment in DIEM aligned with definition available on science.gov:" Open Science is the principle and practice of making research products and processes available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, maintaining security and privacy, and fostering collaborations, reproducibility, and equity."

El Niño is well known to alter weather patterns around the globe in ways that can cause extreme weather events, flooding, and droughts. We expect that the DIEM with regular surveys from the most vulnerable geographies will be able to track trends as well as reported impact of El Niño-related events. 

The DIEM El Niño Open Science Initiative (DIEM-eNOSI) is a research agenda to make optimal use of DIEM data to study humanitarian and livelihood impacts expected from extreme weather events in the next 18-24 months. As a first step, the FAO DIEM has established a project on the Open Science Framework that lays out the initial El Niño-related research agenda focused on increasing use of DIEM data for evidence-based decision making for disaster and crisis response. Here, we will list research questions gathered from a broad spectrum of stakeholders including decisions makers in the United Nations, donor countries, civil society and affected countries. We invite researchers to join the initiative that will provide support and engagement opportunities for open science collaboration on urgent and important research questions using DIEM data.