Scaling-up Multi-Hazard Early Warning System and the Use of Climate Information in Georgia

summary

UNDP, in cooperation with the Government of Georgia, with funds from Green Climate Fund (GCF) aims to adapt to climate change and foster a proactive integrated climate risk management (CRM) approach centred around risk reduction, prevention and preparedness through the establishment of a multi-hazard early warning system (MHEWS) and enhanced use of climate information in planning and decision-making across all sectors.

The project will address the main barriers to the establishment of MHEWS and all other aspects of a priori climate risk management required to support an effective MHEWS.

The project will achieve transformative change in climate risk reduction and management in Georgia by developing a fully integrated impact-based MHEWS. In doing so it will introduce a standardised hazard, risk and vulnerability assessment, mapping methods and technologies and provide critical climate risk information to enable the implementation of nationwide risk reduction policies. Importantly, it will develop long-term institutional and community capacities in climate risk reduction (CRR), climate change adaptation (CCA) and MHEWS. The project will thus catalyse a paradigm shift towards climate risk-informed and resilient development and will directly benefit up to 1.7 million people (40% of the population) currently at risk from hydrometeorological hazards.

what we do

The project’s objective is to reduce exposure of Georgia’s communities, livelihoods and infrastructure to climate-induced natural hazards through a number of activities which include:

Procurement, installation and operationalization of new hydrometeorological monitoring equipment;
Identification and application of approach and tools for gender-sensitive socio-economic vulnerability assessments;
Multi-hazard disaster risk data repository centralizing information management, applying relevant data protocols and with an accessible knowledge portal in place;
Design and introduction of MHEWS covering all 11 river basins of Georgia;
Access and use of tailored climate weather information products and advice to farmers/agricultural enterprises;
Climate-informed multi-hazard risk management (MHRM) responsive system, including basin-level multi-hazard risk management plans and municipal-level multi-hazard response and preparedness plans;
Participatory community-based adaptation planning reinforced through community-based early warning schemes and community-based climate risk management;
Public awareness and capacity building to effectively deliver climate risk information for communities and local first responders;
Implementation of the project selected from 13 shortlisted sites for location-specific priority risk reduction interventions.