In South Sudan, a new risk management tool makes strides

Through a new Risk Information Exchange (RiX) platform, UNDRR is helping to bring humanitarian and development partners together to analyse and address risk factors that would impact relief and development operations.

The platform was first rolled out in South Sudan, aggregating information on hazards, exposure and vulnerability, across a broad range of risk areas, from biological, hydrometeorological to environmental, political and climate change. To facilitate the sharing and collation of risk-related datasets, documents and web-sources, the South Sudan UN Country Team constituted a Risk Working Group made up of focal persons from UN Agencies, Funds, Programs and United Nations Mission in South Sudan.

“Before this joint effort there was no common mechanism to bring risk-related information together. RiX gave us good ground, because for all the actors operating across the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding nexus in South Sudan. Each organization tends to approach risk management in siloed ways, starting with risk information” said Richard Sennoga, UNDRR Risk Officer for South Sudan.

RiX is essentially an aggregator to help anybody with a risk question to search the rapidly evolving global, regional and national data ecosystems. “There is so much data available, but not all accessible. With RiX, we can make it available in one place and shine the light on the good work of local and international partners,” Sennoga said. “We want people to use this as a reference resource, as a go-to, a one-stop point that any actors can bank on for information about South Sudan’s risk landscape.”

“RiX is a dream come true for risk managers,” said Sennoga. “We have a lot of hopes in RiX. It’s been a good start, and it has enormous potential to grow. At the global level, there’s a lot of potential in RiX as a resource for supporting early warning and early action, anticipatory action, preparedness and response for partners working in humanitarian and development contexts anywhere around the world.”

RiX is designed for scalable coverage across multiple countries, with the first cluster including Costa Rica, Somalia, Sudan, Eswatini, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Fiji, in addition to South Sudan. Additional countries will be added to RiX, with a target of 52 countries by the end of 2022, and reaching 100 countries by the end of 2023. RiX is a key tool under the Global Risk Assessment Framework.