Publication: Road Mapping and Capacity Development Planning for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services: A Guidebook
Loading...
Published
2020-11
ISSN
Date
2020-11-24
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Hydrometeorological investments have trended an overall rise since the mid-1990s when the World Bank’s (WB) investments in National Meteorological and Hydrological Service (NMHSs) were structured as small-scale activities, and have gradually shifted toward developing more complete systems. This guidebook aims to provide a structured basis to approach the task of transforming and developing capacities of national meteorological and hydrological services in the WB client countries. The guidebook’s primary focus is to help the World Bank task teams and development partners working with national governments to strengthen NMHSs’ capabilities in producing and delivering services required by the governments, stakeholders, partners, and users. The guidebook will also serve to explain the process of transformation to NMHSs’ managers and staff. It also intends to help development institutions that are committed to NMHSs’ support through the Alliance for Hydromet Development launched at the Conference of the Parties (COP25) in December 2019.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Kootval, Haleh; Soares, Alice. 2020. Road Mapping and Capacity Development Planning for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services: A Guidebook. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34817 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Weather and Climate Resilience : Effective Preparedness through National Meteorological and Hydrological Services(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-09)The importance of weather, climate, and water1 information is rising because of the need to serve more elaborate societal needs, minimize growing economic losses, and help countries adapt to climate change. Weather, climate, and water affect societies and economies through extreme events, such as tropical cyclones, floods, high winds, storm surges, and prolonged droughts, and through high-impact weather and climate events that affect demand for electricity and production capacity, planting and harvesting dates, management of construction, transportation networks and inventories, and human health. The key players are the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), which are the backbone of the global weather and climate enterprise. By international agreement under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), they are the government's authoritative source of weather, climate, and water information, providing timely input to emergency managers, national and local administrations, the public, and critical economic sectors. The report underscores the urgent need to strengthen NMHSs, especially those in developing countries, and provides cost-benefit estimates of the return that countries can hope to achieve. It also offers a recommended approach that has been tested and implemented in Europe, in Central and South Asia, and countries in other regions. The NMHSs make a significant contribution to safety, security, and economic well-being by observing, forecasting, and warning of pending weather, climate, and water threats.Publication A Cost Effective Solution to Reduce Disaster Losses in Developing Countries : Hydro-Meteorological Services, Early Warning, and Evacuation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-05)In Europe, it can be estimated that hydro-meteorological information and early warning systems save several hundreds of lives per year, avoid between 460 million and 2.7 billion Euros of disaster asset losses per year, and produce between 3.4 and 34 billion of additional benefits per year through the optimization of economic production in weather-sensitive sectors (agriculture, energy, etc.). The potential for similar benefits in the developing world is not only proportional to population, but also to increased hazard risk due to climate and geography, as well as increased exposure to weather due to the state of infrastructure. This analysis estimates that the potential benefits from upgrading to developed-country standards the hydro-meteorological information production and early warning capacity in all developing countries include: (i) between 300 million and 2 billion USD per year of avoided asset losses due to natural disasters; (ii) an average of 23,000 saved lives per year, which is valued between 700 million and 3.5 billion USD per year using the Copenhagen Consensus guidelines; and (iii) between 3 and 30 billion USD per year of additional economic benefits. The total benefits would reach between 4 and 36 billion USD per year. Because some of the most expensive components of early warning systems have already been built (e.g., earth observation satellites, global weather forecasts), these investments are relatively modest, estimated here around 1 billion US per year, reaching benefit-cost ratios between 4 and 36.Publication Weathering the Change(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04)The societal need for more accurate and reliable weather, climate, and hydrological information is growing fast as population density and migration increases and climate change takes place. Nowhere is this need more acutely felt than in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The four environmental risks all have a higher-than-average likelihood of occurrence and are tangibly affecting human well-being, including health and economic prosperity. How can these environmental risks be reduced, and losses avoided? Because weather, climate, and the water cycle know no national boundaries, international cooperation is essential for people and society to get timely access to high quality and actionable information to mitigate the threat of meteorological and hydrological hazards. This international cooperation takes place in what is called the Global Weather Enterprise (GWE), a term coined to describe the totality of activities by individuals and organizations to enable weather information to be created and provided to society. The GWE is a supreme exemplar of the value of international cooperation, public-private management, and scientific technological know-how. This report is arranged as follows: Chapter 1 examines the current state of the GWE, the need for modernizing National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), and the difficulties of sustaining improvements once they occur; Chapter 2 takes an in-depth look at NMHSs, highlighting the unacceptably big gap between the capabilities of the most and least advanced ones; Chapter 3 examines why NMHSs need to focus more on providing the services that their stakeholders need and want; and Chapter 4 provides detailed recommendations for modernizing NMHSs.Publication A Workbook on Planning for Urban Resilience in the Face of Disasters : Adapting Experiences from Vietnam’s Cities to Other Cities(World Bank, 2012-01-26)This workbook is intended to help policy makers in developing countries plan for a safer future in urban areas in the face of natural disasters and the consequences of climate change. It is based on the experiences of three cities in Vietnam, Can Tho, Dong Hoi, and Hanoi, that worked with international and local experts under World Bank supervision to develop local resilience action plans (LRAPs) in 2009-10. An LRAP is a detailed planning document that reflects local concerns and priorities based on the experiences of the past and projections for the future. It is not a wish list of projects that may never be completed because they are too costly or lack political support. Rather, it should be a realistic document that describes and establishes priorities for specific steps that can be undertaken in the near term to adapt to both climate related and other hazards. Regardless of their size, location, political orientation, or technical capacity, other cities can learn from the experiences of these pilot cities to develop their own LRAPs. The purpose of this workbook is to adapt the initial experiences of Can Tho, Dong Hoi, and Hanoi to benefit the national government and other communities in Vietnam and beyond. Indeed, the process described in this workbook was later adopted in the cities of Iloilo, the Philippines; Ningbo, China; and Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the concluding chapter of this workbook draws on some of the lessons learned in these cities. However, the workbook, while generalizable to other contexts, largely reflects the Vietnamese experience.Publication Building Resilience : Integrating Climate and Disaster Risk into Development(Washington, DC, 2013-11)This report presents the World Bank Group's experience in climate and disaster resilient development and contends that it is essential to eliminate extreme poverty and achieve shared prosperity by 2030. The report argues for closer collaboration between the climate resilience and disaster risk management communities through the incorporation of climate and disaster resilience into broader development processes. Selected case studies are used to illustrate promising approaches, lessons learned, and remaining challenges all in contribution to the loss and damage discussions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The introduction provides an overview of the UNFCCC and also introduces key concepts and definitions relevant to climate and disaster resilient development. Section two describes the impacts of globally increasing weather-related disasters in recent decades. Section three summarizes how the World Bank Group's goals to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity are expected to be affected by rising disaster losses in a changing climate. Section four discusses the issue of attribution in weather-related disasters, and the additional start-up costs involved in climate and disaster resilient development. Section five builds upon the processes and instruments developed by the climate resilience and the disaster risk management communities of practice to provide some early lessons learned in this increasingly merging field. Section six highlights case studies and emerging good practices in climate and disaster resilient development. Section seven concludes the report, summarizing key lessons learned and identifying potential gaps and avenues for future work.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.