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Pitch

Intelligent Adaptation: a Climate Fusion Center bridging climate and weather, geopolitics, relief operations, and strategic intelligence.


Description

Summary

There is a pressing need to be able to “fuse” emerging trends in the fields of climate change, meteorology, geopolitics, humanitarian operations, as well as strategic and anticipatory intelligence.  Such an information fusion process is a key aspect of climate change adaptation, as it affirms that accelerated change is an accepted reality, as well as an accelerating process with multidimensional consequences. 

This proposal suggests the development of a Relief Analysis Center. The RAC is envisioned to be an agile information fusion venture that straddles the nexus of climate and weather, geopolitics, and humanitarian operations. Within that nexus, RAC content is envisioned to be forward leaning, and based on strategic and anticipatory intelligence principles.

 


Category of the action

Adaptation


What actions do you propose?

Need

One could argue that the complex geopolitical and humanitarian consequences of climate change have greatly accelerated since 2012. Below are just a few examples:

Last year, the climate change-exacerbated Sahel food insecurity crisis nearly reached a tipping point when locust swarms took safe harbor in the instability caused by the Libyan civil war. Once fully gestated, an aerial force of locusts took to the air, attacking vulnerable cropping areas in Niger and Mali.

Both West Africa and Haiti have suffered anomalous patterns of severe droughts and extreme flooding— leading to agricultural emergencies, internal displacement, and extensive relief operations.

New research has emerged framing the complex emergency in Syria and its extraordinary humanitarian implications within the larger context of climate change’s impact on the Arab Spring movements and overall sustainability within the Middle East and North Africa region.

Superstorm Sandy has been linked to weather patterns resulting from an ice-free arctic, and Super Typhoon Bopha (a storm unprecedented in its formation at low equatorial latitudes) has brought dire humanitarian consequences to portions of the Philippines, including a maternal health crisis.

And the possibility of non-linear rates of arctic ice melt has even been cited as a potential geopolitical “Black Swan” the Obama Administration must consider in its National Security planning.

These recent developments are part of a larger issue. The potential impacts of climate change have significant, tangible consequences in the arenas of geopolitics and humanitarian operations, and their rate of occurrence is complex and seems to be accelerating. Within this space of synergy there is a further need to support policy makers, analysts, NGOs, and members of the mainstream media with more than just content and stories. To be truly effective, a nexus that straddles weather and climate, geopolitics, and humanitarian operations must be one that is forward looking, drawing its operating philosophy from established disciplines including strategic and anticipatory intelligence. In the “New Normal,” key stakeholders must be armed with well-crafted, elegant, and future-oriented analysis to help break down the emerging disasters and offer roadmaps to meaningful humanitarian action.

There is a pressing need to be able to “fuse” emerging trends in the fields of climate science and meteorology with breaking geopolitical analysis as well as profiles of high-impact humanitarian operations being executed on the ground.  Such an information fusion process is a key aspect of climate change adaptation, as it affirms that accelerated change is an accepted reality, as well as an accelerating process with multidimensional consequences. 

Proposal Concept

This proposal suggests the development of a Relief Analysis Center. The RAC is envisioned to be an agile information fusion venture that straddles the nexus of climate and weather, geopolitics, humanitarian operations, and strategic intelligence.

Existing Prototype

A prototype of the Relief Analysis Center already exists. Melting Glacier Analytics’ year-old project, the Relief Analysis Wire (www.reliefanalysis.com) is an embryonic predecessor to a fully functioning RAC. With opt-in subscribers ranging from NGOs, to members of the media, to think tanks, the Relief Analysis Wire has authored over 50 articles on issues related to climate change, extreme weather events, geopolitics, emerging disasters, and highly-leveraged humanitarian operations. The majority of these articles have forward-looking perspectives.

A testament to the value of this type of approach is in the number of outlets who have published or cross-posted Relief Analysis Wire content since its inception in February 2012. A few examples include:

•  AccuWeather’s cross posting of articles about emerging food security issues in the Pacific Islands following Cyclone Evan, as well as the potential agricultural impact of locust infestations in the Red Sea region.

•  Zomppa’s posting of an article on post-Sandy Haiti, Haiti’s long term food security outlook, and key humanitarian agencies engaged in the agricultural sector.

•  InterAction’s posting of an article on the climate change dimensions of the Syrian humanitarian complex emergency.

•  The Center for Climate and Security’s cross-posting of an article on the geopolitical implications of non-linear arctic ice melt rates. This piece was referenced in a Foreign Policy article on “Black Swans” the Obama Administration should consider from a national security perspective, authored by the Brookings Institute. The Center for Climate and Security also cross-posted an article analyzing whether climate change was driving a new security architecture in the South Pacific, and an article on the impact of the 2013 monsoon season on Myanmar’s geopolitics.

•  Monthly Developments Magazine’s posting of an article about the geopolitical origins of the 2012 Sahel locust infestation, and whether this could be a tipping point in the climate change-exacerbated Sahel food security crisis.

•  The Soros Foundation/EurasiaNet’s posting of an article about the robust humanitarian operations of the Turkish Red Crescent and its synergy with emerging Turkish National Security Doctrine.

•  InterAction’s cross-post of an article about the strain on the humanitarian community caused by rapid artic ice melt and subsequent drought/flood blocking patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as winter emergencies exacerbated by ice-melt enhanced negative Arctic Oscillation episodes.

•  Environmental Graffiti’s publication of climate-enhanced flood and drought disasters in Haiti and West Africa in late 2012. Other Environmental Graffiti content has appeared on the Huffington Post.

Evolution from a New Media Venture to an Agile Fusion Center

Early returns from this prototype are promising. Many of these outlets report that Relief Analysis Wire content is popular with customers in the meteorology, humanitarian, and geopolitical communities. Stakeholders including international NGOs, think tanks, and national level public information officers have followed and provided compliments to this specific style of content development.

Yet there are gaps in the Relief Analysis Wire’s current structure that can be addressed in the creation of a fully-functioning Relief Analysis Center, and subsequently leveraged as opportunities. As an entirely bootstrapped venture, the Wire is restrained by a proportionally limited number of authors and analysts, limited editorial calendar, and limited time to fully cultivate followers on social media (Twitter) and opt-in community.

Early returns indicate that there is a strong market and need for forward-leaning operational analysis that achieves synergy across the fields of climate change, weather, emerging disasters, geopolitics, and humanitarian operations.

Content from a Relief Analysis Center could support a variety of stakeholders, including but not limited to: policy makers, intelligence analysts, niche media (e.g. weather or environmental) or mainstream (e.g. geopolitical) media, NGO’s, as well as think tanks and other entities involved in humanitarian operations.

A Relief Analysis Center could potentially be a 501c3 (Foundation or grant-supported), or an LLC (investor supported) or even potentially inclusion within the structure of a larger public or private center entity. In the initial prototyping a start-up phase the Center would lean greatly on the discipline of social entrepreneurship to help make these operational decisions. 

The Relief Analysis Center is envisioned to be a highly leveraged, agile, and location independent organization that provides outstanding content about emerging disasters and humanitarian operations.

A small staff of visionary, experienced analysts and writers who collectively have the ability to “collide” the latest trends in climate and weather, geopolitics, humanitarian operations, and strategic and anticipatory intelligence have the ability to develop powerful and influential content.

The current prototype, the Relief Analysis Wire, publishes articles that has primarily been written by one author (the Founder of Melting Glacier Analytics), as well as additional posts from a Contributing Humanitarian Analyst and guest bloggers who are also MGA community members.

Going forward in the Project Implementation Phase (see Timeline) an agile Relief Analysis Center can be operated by as few as 2 FTE with contributors from guest authors in the fields cited above. It is possible that the Center would be able to offer an honorarium for freelance contributions. The Center could ideally scale to a more robust staff of analysts, Subject Matter Experts, and writers if desired by funding entities.


Who will take these actions?

To overcome a relatively small staff and to thrive as an agile fusion center, the Relief Analysis Center would form a panel of recently formed organizations and ventures who could contribute wisdom and guidance to the process. The “Venture Integration Panel”, many of whom are current Melting Glacier Analytics community members, could include, at minimum:

·        Red (team) Analysis, led by Dr. Helene Lavoix, would contribute vital knowledge about strategic and anticipatory intelligence and how this field’s underpinnings should inform the Center’s content development work, as well as on emerging national and global security paradigms.

·        Zomppa, led by Dr. Belinda Chiu, would contribute outstanding Subject Matter Expertise on food and children, and have worked with MGA on several past projects related to climate change, food security, and kids.

·        The Mindfulness Project, led by Dr. Rick Gannotta, would contribute innovative Subject Matter Expertise on the potential application of mindfulness in high reliability situations—an increasingly important subject confronting the global humanitarian community.

·        The Center for Climate and Security, led by Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, contributes ground breaking Subject Matter Expertise on the synergy between climate change and evolving national and global security paradigms.


Where will these actions be taken?

The Relief Analysis Center is envisioned to be a highly leveraged, agile, and location independent operation. Content development inputs will be solicited from MGA project partners and MGA community members worldwide.

Current MGA community members are based in locations including Brazil, Fiji, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, and the United States.

While the Relief Analysis Center may end up having a United States-based mailing address, our work is envisioned to encompass continents and island states in literally every time zone of the globe.


What are other key benefits?

With accelerated impacts of climate change across a variety of sectors, a key problem for media, analysts, policy makers, and humanitarian organization is one of complexity. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, humanitarian operations are being stretched increasingly thin in every corner of the globe, and geopolitical ramifications are increasing.

A Relief Analysis Center seeks to add clarity and innovation to this backdrop of complexity. With clear, insightful content created by fusing emerging trends in climate, weather, geopolitics, emerging disasters, humanitarian operations, and strategic and anticipatory intelligence together, the Center hopes to provide its readership with fresh insights never quite considered before.


What are the proposal’s costs?

The start-up costs of the Center, per the phases in the project timeline, are as follows:

Phase 1: Prototype Finalization - $0.00 (bootstrapped)

Phase 2: Gap Analysis - $5,000.00 (seed funding)

Phase 3: Fund Selected Business Model - $5,000.00 (seed funding)

Phase 4: Project Implementation – 2+FTE at $60k/yr – total operations around $150k/year, to be refined by gap analysis and inputs of funding stakeholders once funding is obtained.


Time line

We envision the following timelines and milestones in the formation of an established Relief Analysis Center:

Phase 1: Prototype Finalization - June 1 – September 1, 2013 – Refine prototype as a proof-of-concept. Continue publishing with other influential cross-post outlets. Continue to develop opt-in e-mail community. Develop enhanced functionality, such as emerging disaster micro-blogging.

 Phase 2: Gap Analysis - September 1 – December 31, 2013 – Undertake a gap analysis study to inform major aspects of business model. The study should provide detailed options and analyze if a Center should: a) operate as an LLC with investment funding; b) operate as an LLC with other sources of revenue (i.e., contracting, consulting, product sales); c) operate as a 501c3; d) operate as an activity within a larger entity. For each of these structural options, specific gaps and solutions should be clearly delineated (i.e. “angel investment funding will require XX pageviews per month”). This study revolves around obtaining close inputs from the angel investment, foundation, grant making, and other communities. Market influence of similar organizations would be analyzed during this phase. (Note, if awarded, Climate CoLab seed funding would allocated to this study.)

 Phase 3: Fund Selected Business Model - January 1 – June 30, 2014 – Pursuit of investment funding, self-generated income, grant/foundation funding, or a relationship with a larger organization to fund Center operations at 2 FTE (full time equivalent) or greater. Content development on the prototype, specifically authoring highly effective and influential content, would continue.

Phase 4: Project Implementation - July 1, 2014 – forward – Implementation of the Relief Analysis Center as an operational entity with 2 FTE or greater.


Related proposals


References

References

Because many references have been made to Relief Analysis Wire content, the articles cited here can be found in the left hand column of www.reliefanalysis.com.

Red (team) Analysis (see all articles, very important underpinnings to our approach). Biography of Dr. Helene Lavoix.

Zomppa

The Mindfulness Project

The Center for Climate and Security