Putting science
at the heart of development
Definitions
Advances in forecasting and technology promise more effective early warning systems for natural hazards. What stands between disaster alert and action, and how can the impact of early warning tools be enhanced?
C
Capacity
The strengths, attributes and resources within a community, society or organisation that can be used to achieve agreed goals. Capacity may include infrastructure and physical means, institutions, societal coping abilities, as well as human knowledge, skills and collective attributes such as social relationships, leadership and management.
Climate change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines climate change as "a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer".
Complex hazard
A hazard characterised by intense inter-relationships between two or more crisis drivers, which increase the effects of any single humanitarian crisis exponentially. A complex hazard requires that approaches to crisis prevention, preparedness and response are more holistic than isolated with specific sectors.
Crowdsourcing
A distributed problem-solving model where problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. The solvers or users — also known as the crowd — typically form online communities, submit solutions and sort through them to identify those that work best. These 'best' solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem. Crowdsourcing in humanitarian work became well-known publically following its use in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
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