Views from the Frontline data visualisation platform: how well do you know your community’s resilience priorities?

What are the priority threats you face? What do you think needs to be done to reduce these risks? What barriers are you experiencing when trying to prepare? We have asked these questions and more to thousands of local people across 50 countries. These local perspectives of risk and resilience can be found in an open-source database for anyone to use. The data can be disaggregated by country, community, gender, age, and disability. It highlights where communities have become more vulnerable or resilient to factors such as increased frequency of disasters, changing weather patterns and increases in the day-to-day risks that people experience.

The process developed for collecting this data makes the Views from the Frontline 2019 programme innovative. It relies on a set of questions designed in very simple language, that demystifies the jargon of international development frameworks, to make it easily understandable for all groups of local communities. Moreover, the three components of the VFL methodology (collection, reflection, action) allow for the creation of spaces for dialogue at the local level between communities, CSOs and local government, to develop local action plans on the basis of the data collected and analysed.

We present this data platform at the GPDRR in a space where participants can interact with the data, discover what the communities in their country say, and understand the importance of including local voices in the resilience-building process. This space at the Innovation Platform will allow participants to explore this Views from the Frontline visualisation platform, available to play with on tablets and laptops. To increase interest and understanding of how the data can be accessed and used, participants will be invited to take part in a series of games and exercises, including a quiz-style game where people can engage with the data platform to find answers to questions around local resilience and inclusive risk governance, and a simulation of developing a DRR plan based on the VFL data.

The space will also showcase videos of the VFL process at the community level, and participants will be able to call and talk with community representatives who participated in the VFL surveys to interact and learn more.

In addition, GP participants will have the opportunity to participate in the data collection, by responding to the VFL survey: this data could be collected and used to present an overview of the diverse range of GP participants and the threats and actions they prioritise.