Strata: Mapping climate, environmental and security vulnerability hotspots

Abstract

Climate and environmental changes, as well as conflict events and violence, can have compounding impacts on livelihoods and the safety and security of population groups, particularly when multiple events are interrelated, coincide or occur in succession. How people are impacted depends on where they are located, how vulnerable they are, and the magnitude of the hazard. Although a significant amount of geospatial data is freely available, there has been a lack of user-friendly data tools allowing for integrated data-driven assessments of these complex climate-related security risks. Strata is such a tool, developed by a multidisciplinary team and co-designed with practitioners in the fields of peacebuilding, climate adaptation and environmental conservation. It addresses the need for making visible the available climate and conflict data via a web browser and allows a high level of analysis and customisation by users. Here we describe the process of co-developing the principles behind Strata, the data aggregation framework used, and the choice of datasets. Example outputs for Somalia, the pilot location, demonstrate how data is aggregated to produce hotspot maps and how these provide information on where impacts relating to climate, environmental and security stresses should be investigated, at a range of spatial scales. We reflect on challenges in co-designing Strata and pathways for continued development of the tool. We also highlight how user insights can be incorporated in this and similar tools, to ensure actionable data-driven insights within the context of available data and understandings of impact pathways.