Speaker
Description
South Africa faces various environmental threats, among them being the altering nature of extreme events due to climate change. To build the nation's resilience, comprehensive policy development and informed decision-making are imperative. The presentation will focus on the South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas (SARVA), a platform funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and hosted by the National Research Foundation - South African Environmental Observation Network (NRF-SAEON). In 2008, the DSI introduced SARVA as a centralized repository for climate and environmental data in South Africa. Initially comprising static maps and paper publications, SARVA has since evolved, now offering an assortment of interactive, digital decision support tools such as dashboards, infographics, and a searchable atlas. Its diverse datasets encompass environmental, economic, social, and settlements subsets, all aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The platform incorporates crucial information on recorded disasters, sourced from the Emergency Events database (EM-DAT) of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the National Climate Change Information System of the Department of Forestry Fisheries and Environment, and the climate risk profiler based on contributions from various sources. Leveraging a Geographic Information System (GIS) based platform, SARVA empowers users to visualize pertinent data layers, facilitating informed decision-making. Moreover, SARVA welcomes data contributions from all users, not solely those affiliated with the NRF-SAEON, with each dataset being assigned a unique digital object identifier (DOI). Furthermore, SARVA is integrated with the Open Data Platform of SAEON is CoreTrustSeal accredited.
| Student or Postdoc? | No. Not a student nor Postdoc. |
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