UN High Commissioner for Refugees: Climate Change and Displacement
Climate change and natural disasters can add to and worsen the threats that force people to flee across international borders. The interplay between climate, conflict, poverty and persecution greatly increases the complexity of refugee emergencies.

Victoria, Australia – National Climate Change and Agriculture Plan Agreed
Australian ministers met in Melbourne at the Agricultural Ministers’ Forum to endorse a Victorian-led program that will facilitate collaboration between state and Commonwealth governments to meet the challenges of climate change and support the agriculture sector to adapt.

Flood forecasting a cyclone game-changer for Fiji
The ground-breaking project has developed and implemented a Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS) that delivers an integrated approach to forecasting, monitoring and warning for coastal flooding, no matter what the cause – river or ocean.

Bangladesh to move Rohingya to flood-prone island 
Bangladesh will start relocating Rohingya Muslims to a flood-prone island off its coast as several thousand refugees have agreed to move. 

Tasman fire review finds shortfalls in New Zealand’s preparedness for large-scale blazes
A review of firefighting efforts during the Tasman fires last summer, which cost Fire and Emergency New Zealand $13 million, has found shortfalls in the number of skilled staff working in risk management.

UNSDSN TReNDS – SDG Financing Initiative
In 2018, SDSN launched and became the Co-Chair of a Working Group on SDG Costing & Financing with the IMF, OECD, and World Bank. This group convenes sector experts to aggregate their respective costing models and data for SDG targets, especially for low-income countries.

Addressing the Challenges of Drafting Contracts for Data Collaboration
Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) is a new initiative seeking to address barriers to data collaboration. The partnership, launched in early 2019, has already yielded a number of outputs, including a project inception brief, the Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration tool — which presents key considerations for the development of data sharing agreements — and an initial analytical framework.

GFDRR: Communication during disaster recovery
This Guide is intended primarily for local and national government officials and key decision-makers involved in disaster recovery planning and operations. It has been developed to support communication during recovery planning and operations in a range of different country contexts and any disaster type.

UNESCO Guidelines for Assessing Learning Facilities in the Context of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
For the celebrations of the International Day for Disaster Reduction 2019, UNESCO launched a new publication – The UNESCO Guidelines for Assessing Learning Facilities in the Context of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. The Guidelines follow VISUS methodology and come in three volumes – An Introduction to learning facilities assessment and to the VISUS Methodology, VISUS Methodology and VISUS Implementation

UNDRR Work Programme 2020-2021
The UNDRR Work Programme 2020-2021 outlines the plans to accelerate the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The plans are developed in line with the existing Strategic Framework covering 2016-2021 and focuses on the key results under each Strategic Objective of UNDRR.

Data Sharing at Scale: A Heuristic for Affirming Data Cultures
This essay introduces a heuristic for pursuing richer characterisations of the “data cultures” at play in international, interdisciplinary data sharing. The heuristic prompts cultural analysts to query the contexts of data sharing for a particular discipline, institution, geography, or project at seven scales – the meta, macro, meso, micro, techno, data, and nano.

Citizen science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Citizen science is an emerging example of a non-traditional data source that is already making a contribution. In this Perspective, a roadmap is presented that outlines how citizen science can be integrated into the formal Sustainable Development Goals reporting mechanisms.

World Bosai Forum/International Disaster Risk Conference 2019 – (09-12 Nov, Sendai, Japan)
The World Bosai Forum proposes solutions from various points of view to enable disaster risk reduction in Japan and overseas and aims to promote the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

Big data, Big Impact? The Future of Gender-Sensitive Data Systems – (New York City, 12 November)
This event will showcase the results of a five-year research program on big data and gender, featuring groundbreaking projects that investigated the potential of new data sources to answer critical questions about the lives of women and girls.

CODATA – VizAfrica Botswana (18-19 Nov, Botswana)
The VizAfrica 2019 Data Visualization Symposium will take place from 18th -19th November at the University of Botswana Gaborone, Botswana. The theme of the symposium is “Application of Data, Information and Scientific Visualization for Resource Management and Sustainability.”

Understanding Risk Europe – (27-29 November, Bucharest, Romania) 
The Understanding Risk Europe forum will provide a platform for the public and private sector, local, national and regional institutions, non-governmental organizations, academia and media to build partnerships and to share knowledge and best practices. Registration closes 15 November.

Evidence for Policy School – (Jan 13-15 2020, Florence, Italy)
The Evidence for Policy School aims to help researchers to have more impact on policy and policymakers to use evidence for policy solutions. The school will focus on the tools and approaches to inform the policymaking process through evidence. Scientists and policymakers are invited to send their applications fulfilling the listed criteria. Applications close 8 November.