Programme Policy Officer (Disaster Risk Modeling Analyst) - SSA8 at WFP - World Food Programme

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

To learn more about WFP, visit our website: https://www.wfp.org and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.

WHY JOIN WFP? 

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

Job Description

The Programme Policy Officer (Disaster Risk Modeling Analyst) will be responsible for strengthening MINEMA’s system's performance for the developed advanced early warning system that predicts and mitigates the impact of natural disasters such as landslides and storms.  

DATA COLLECTION, PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS:

• Coordinate extensive field data collection across various regions for ground truth verification of the models’ predictions. Coordinate with regional offices to streamline data gathering efforts.
• Analyzing historical data, geological surveys, meteorological data, and other relevant information to understand the frequency, intensity, and distribution of different hazards.
• Combine, overlay and display mathematical models generated by the system and process the risk quantifications,
• Analyzes data from vulnerability of communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems to various hazards for understanding of their susceptibility to damage and disruption

DATA ANALYSIS, INTEGRATION AND MANAGEMENT:

• Ensure seamless integration of data from stakeholder APIs. Regularly assess and troubleshoot data flow processes.
• Analyzes hazard risk mapping and quantifying the exposure of assets, such as buildings, roads, and critical facilities, to different types of hazards.

MODEL CALIBRATION, THRESHOLDS AND EXPOSURE ANALYSES:

• Conduct calibrations of disaster prediction models and provide risk probabilities and quantifications, and generate early warning messages,
• Enhance the system calibration and ensure risk warning messages are accurate
• Analyze model thresholds and outputs and develop suggestions for calibration parameters,
• Organize calibration review meeting with appropriate modelling experts to ensure the improvement of the models’ predictive accuracy.

DASHBOARD DEVELOPMENT:

• Design and implement informative dashboards for strategic decision-making. Continuously update dashboard features to reflect real-time data and insights.
• Knowledge and skills aligned with combining hazard, vulnerability, and exposure information to estimate the potential impact of disasters including potential casualties, economic losses, and social disruption,
• Update the dashboard information and explain system functionalities

MODEL ENHANCEMENT:

• Innovate and apply improvements to existing disaster models.
• Stay abreast of technological advancements and integrate best practices into model development processes.
• Collaborate and coordinate various modeling experts to improve or upgrade existing models.
• Investigates and assesses potential risk factors arising through different data sets and data analysis.

DISSEMINATION AND COMMUNICATION OF WARNING MESSAGES:

• Generate system messages and analyze the risk probabilities
• Oversee the Early warning generation and dissemination
• Model risk based on different datasets generated by the system
• Design and update the structure through which warning messages can be disseminated and communicated
• Collect system information feedback from the emergency responders and selected local community levels and hazard risk monitoring
• Coach, mentor and provide ToT trainings for EWS functionalities to the department staff and other key stakeholders
• Maintain up to date risk exposure information and processing risk control and propose mitigation measures to the management team
• Performs other related duties as assigned or requested