Michael Owen1, *, Andrew Kruczkiewicz2, 3, 4, +, Jamon Van Den Hoek5, +
1 Columbia University, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, New York, 10027, USA
2 Columbia University, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Climate School, New York, 10027, USA
3 Red Cross Red Crescent, Climate Centre, The Hague, The Netherlands
4 University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, Enschede, The Netherlands
5 Oregon State University, Geography Program, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Corvallis, 97331, USA
*[email protected]
+ these authors contributed equally to this work
Abstract
This study presents a novel approach to systematically measure climatic and environmental exposure in refugee camps using remote sensing and geospatial data. Using a case study of seventeen refugee camps across five countries in East Africa, we develop an climatic and environmental exposure index to quantify each camp's level of exposure and variability relative to a population of simulated camp locations within the country. Our results show that seven of seventeen refugee camps are within the upper two quartiles of exposure relative to a simulated population, suggesting that the approximately six-hundred thousand refugees living in these camps face elevated exposure compared to other potential camp locations. This method stands to improve the process of gathering climatic and environmental data on remote spaces in a reliable, low-cost, and standardized manner. Moving forward, further refinement of this index and additional automation could enable real-time updates on climatic and environmental exposure to support decision-making related to disaster risk and resilience in refugee camp management.
This repository includes The Python code used to generate the environmental and climate data used in the exposure index, corresponding datasets, and figures included in the publication.