Developing countries, such as many South-East and South Asia countries with middle-low incomes, typically lack financial protection against the impacts of disasters and rely heavily on ex-post measures, such as donor assistance, in order to meet their financing needs. As such, those countries are among the ones that would benefit the most from Disaster Risk Financing (DRF) products.
Based on this evidence and at the direct request of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, the World Bank Crisis and Disaster Risk Finance team funded the development of a system to support financing for rapid response to flood events in the region. The project, called “South East Asia Flood Monitoring and Risk Assessment for Regional DRF Mechanism,” led by Deltares (NL) in partnership with CIMA Research Foundation, resulted in the development of an IT platform capable of estimating the number of people affected by a flood from a combination of real-time models, EO data and ground observations. The combination of different types of input data for rapid flood impact estimation is highly innovative and responds to the demand of World Bank countries to provide technological and financial tools and means to manage emergencies and safeguard people’s lives. The project is now in its second phase, which aims to strengthen the satellite products used in the platform and works synergistically on this front with the eDrift project
