U-Alert

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Key words: Africa, floods, heat waves, air pollution, climate change adaptation, mobile data, satellite, remote sensing, urban, riskSummary:Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents in the world to climate change with widespread low adaptive capacity and resilience. Climate change is already exacerbating many development challenges such as endemic poverty and inequality, ecosystem degradation, natural hazard related disasters and food security. The frequency and severity of extreme climatic events including droughts and intense rainfall events has increased in recent years. These climatic events are now having a significant impact on people's lives and livelihoods causing deaths and damage from heat waves, flooding and air pollution. Climate change is also making these events more unpredictable and difficult to manage, especially in densely populated urban environments where emergency services and infrastructure is often inadequate and thus unable to respond to rapidly changing situations and multiple simultaneous pressures.At the same time, urban areas are becoming increasingly populated as people migrate from rural areas in search of better employment opportunities and a standard of living. Due to this sudden influx of people (and expansion of urban areas and slums), many vulnerable people are being forced on settle on marginal land such as flood plains and steep slopes and thus being placed at greater risk. There is a growing demand for new forms of environmental monitoring to better predict and be able to respond extreme climatic events. Unfortunately, many regions in Africa are characterised by poor environmental data and sparse weather stations, there is a lack of observations to validate and downscale climate change projections, accurately predict and assess impacts as well inform short/long term adaptation strategies. Many cities and infrastructure users in Africa are reliant on the services and expertise of international and national experts constrained by data limitations, who are reliant on coarse resolution climate data and projections which can result in misinterpretation and misinformation being issued. There is thus a pressing need for better localised hazard prediction systems to monitor and manage the impacts of extreme events such as flooding, heat stress and air pollution, informed from and delivered directly to at risk populations.It has been demonstrated that signals sent between mobile phone antennas can provide an alternative means to measure rainfall intensity and duration in situations where in-situ data isn't available. This data can be combined with hazard models to predict the degree and extent of flooding in urban areas. Furthermore, other studies have demonstrated that accurate air temperature information can be derived from internal smartphone sensors and by measuring battery discharge fluctuations. Simultaneously, satellite derived aerosol measurements can provide information on air pollution and public health risks. The combination of the aforementioned mobile derived data and remote sensing techniques can be used to warn urban populations of impending climate risks. The growing number and use of mobile phones in developing countries allows SMS warnings and advice to be delivered to those in need of this information, as well as a means to collect data on essential climate variables through the creation "citizen observatories". This project aims to assess the feasibility and scope of bringing together such technologies to collect information of urban risk and vulnerability, analyse it to produce warnings and deliver it directly to mobile phone users in affected areas in an "easy-to-action" message.