SciDev.Net

SERVIR is a regional environmental imaging and monitoring system — operating in Africa and Latin America — built on satellite and geospatial data. It can monitor and forecast ecological changes and natural hazards. The website publishes interactive maps including near real-time satellite feeds of regional weather and ecological conditions, and real time updates on fires, floods, red tides and weather conditions. It also provides access to 3D imaging software.

APDB — established in 2002 by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the New Partnership for Africas Development — provides a forum where representatives from African governments can discuss biotechnology strategies with regional and international nongovernmental organisations.

It links to useful background documents, including the 'statement of commitments' adopted at the second APDB meeting in September 2004.

The African Union Biosafety Project — a joint initiative of the African Union and the German Development Corporation — aims to help African countries meet their obligations under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and promotes adopting the African Model Law on Safety in Biotechnology as a common framework for biosafety regulation in Africa.

The project publishes basic information on its aims, objectives and management as well as documentation about its activities and meetings. It provides copies of the Model Law in four major languages and links to related websites.

OpenDOAR is a directory of open access repositories — institutional and subject-based archives of academic papers, books, datasets, conferences, patents and multimedia that are free to access.

The directory covers 29 topics including agriculture, technology, health, environment and medicine in over 50 languages.

Repositories listed in the directory can be searched — and statistically analysed with the help of OpenDOAR charts — by topic, language and content or software type.

These country-level reports, published by the Climate Systems and Policy research cluster at the University of Oxford, provide data on observed and projected climates in 52 countries in the developing world.

Each report contains maps, diagrams, tables and a narrative of the data, putting it in the context of the country's general climate. Files in text format with datasets containing underlying and model data can be downloaded for further use.

After the release of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001, UNEP and GRID Arendal published this set of 25 graphics focused on the special challenges that Africa faces due to expected long term climate change. 

Three sections cover the evidence of change in Africa, the science driving these changes, and vulnerability to — and trends in — extreme events on the continent. The graphics also show the severity of climate impacts on fresh water, human health, and food in Africa.

The WHO Global InfoBase has, for the first time, assembled in one place, country-level risk factor data stratified by age and sex, with complete source and survey information. The current version of the InfoBase contains over 130,000 data points from more than 2,800 sources. Currently the InfoBase contains reports on 180 out of 192 WHO Member States. A unique feature is that each record can be linked back to all its survey information, including the primary source.

The database is updated daily and provides users with comparable country-level mortality, mean systolic blood pressure, mean body mass index, and overweight/obesity data. A search function allows users to customise their data search based on specific criteria, and shows data in text tables and graphs.