Indexing climatic and environmental exposure of refugee camps with a case study in East Africa

Michael Owen*, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, Jamon van den Hoek

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
49 Downloads (Pure)

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 a climatic and environmental exposure index to quantify each camp’s exposure relative to a population of simulated camp locations within the hosting 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 more than 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 and analyzing climatic and environmental data on geographically remote humanitarian spaces in a reliable, low-cost, and standardized manner. Automation and refinement of this index could enable real-time updates on climatic and environmental exposure to support decision-making related to disaster risk reduction in refugee camp management.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7533
JournalScientific reports
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2023

Keywords

  • ITC-GOLD
  • ITC-ISI-JOURNAL-ARTICLE

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Indexing climatic and environmental exposure of refugee camps with a case study in East Africa'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this