In this case study, we’ll shed light on how PJMF grant partner Open Contracting Partnership is contributing both learnings and tangible assets back to the sector after building its disaster risk reduction solution, IDS-DRR.
<aside>
AI Journey Phase: Impact
Module(s): Strengthening the Ecosystem
About Open Contracting Partnership:
Domain: Civic Tech
Organization Size: 11-50
Region: Global
Website: http://www.open-contracting.org
</aside>
Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) is a nonprofit organization focused on transforming procurement for people and the planet. Operating in over 50 countries, OCP is creating a digital, data-driven service to ensure public money is spent openly, fairly, and effectively on public contracts — the single biggest line item of spending by most governments. Improving the openness of public spending enables more data-informed decision making, reduces the risk of corruption, and helps ensure that communities are getting the services they need.
When it comes to natural disaster response and resilience, governments often struggle to know if the funds invested are effectively reaching at-risk populations and creating more climate resilient communities. To address this challenge, OCP partnered with CivicDataLab (CDL), a research lab working at the intersection of data, tech, design, and social science to bolster civic engagement in India, to build what later became the Intelligent Data Solution for Disaster Risk Reduction (IDS-DRR). This platform is designed to make data easily accessible and understandable for state and district officials so they can direct resources in a way that most accurately reflects local needs.
Starting in 2021, OCP and CDL chose to prototype this solution in the Assam district in northeastern India, by analyzing floods. Floods are the most frequent of natural disasters, globally, causing widespread loss of life, livelihoods, property, and infrastructure. And in Assam, flooding events affect ~40% of the population annually, often disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable communities.
As a result of IDS-DRR, Assam authorities have been able to make more data-driven decisions around how flood-related funds are distributed. As reported by OCP and CDL in a recent blog post:
“In March 2023, 95% of the available budget for flood-related spending went to the six out of ten districts identified by [OCP and] CivicDataLab’s data model as highly vulnerable to flooding and were used to mostly procure for repair and restoration of roads, bridges and embankments, benefiting approximately 6.5 million people.”
This is a huge improvement from their old approach, where funds were allocated based on a first-come-first-serve basis. In the past, authorities had no visibility into whether assistance was adequately meeting the needs of communities or helping build resilience for future flooding events.
From the start, however, OCP had imagined a solution that would be scalable to a wide range of climate events and geographies across the world. Although first applied in the flood risk management space, the team sought to build a model and platform that was replicable and customizable for other local contexts. Furthermore, they sought to create a solution that could be readily adapted by others without needing heavy hand-holding by OCP.
The remainder of this case study will dive into the ways that OCP has shared their technology development processes, learnings, and the assets themselves — such as datasets and AI models — to benefit the wider disaster response and resilience ecosystem. Achieving this goal of openness takes commitment and deliberate planning. For OCP, this included steps like: