COVID-19 Pandemic, Geospatial Information, and Community Resilience

Global Applications and Lessons

Abbas Rajabifard, Daniel Paez, Greg Foliente, Abbas Rajabifard, Daniel Paez, Greg Foliente

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032020457
  9780367775315
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000402940
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Technology & Engineering

"The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.1201/9781003181590, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license."

Geospatial information plays an important role in managing location dependent pandemic situations across different communities and domains. Geospatial information and technologies are particularly critical to strengthening urban and rural resilience, where economic, agricultural, and various social sectors all intersect. Examining the United Nations' SDGs from a geospatial lens will ensure that the challenges are addressed for all populations in different locations. This book, with worldwide contributions focused on COVID-19 pandemic, provides interdisciplinary analysis and multi-sectoral expertise on the use of geospatial information and location intelligence to support community resilience and authorities to manage pandemics.

Part II

Technical and Techno-Social Solutions

2

Land Administration and Authoritative Geospatial Information: Lessons from Disasters to Support Building Resilience to Pandemics

Keith Clifford Bell and Vladimir V. Evtimov

Throughout 2020, much has been written advocating investment in geospatial information and land administration systems as solutions to pandemic resilience, but closer analyses may suggest a lack of rigor and even a tendency for hype. Resilience of countries, cities and communities in the context of land administration and geospatial information is best achieved through sustainable, authoritative, geospatial information under the framework of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and comprehensive and secure Land Administration Systems (LAS). However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the pandemic has severely impacted progress towards all the SDGs under the 2030 Agenda. Responding to disasters and pandemics does not afford the luxury of extended templated diagnostic assessments, economic and financial analyses and cost-benefit studies of investing in LAS and NSDI. Drawing on the experiences of the WB-FAO partnership, the Chapter discusses good practices of rapid assessments of the resilience and resilience impact of authoritative NSDI and LAS.

2.1 Introduction

“The COVID-19 crisis threatens to reverse much of the development progress made in recent years and throw hundreds of millions of people back into poverty. It has required countries to respond rapidly and decisively to major disruptions of their healthcare systems, their economies and the livelihoods of their citizens. I have been inspired by the World Bank Group's response – mobilizing fast to deliver urgent support to countries to minimize loss of life, mitigate severe economic hardship, protect hard-earned development gains, and protect the poorest and most vulnerable”.

David Malpass, President of the World Bank.¹

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the deepest global recession in decades, and this is well reported by both the World Bank [1] and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the first recession since 1870 to be triggered solely by a pandemic. After more than a decade of uninterrupted growth, the global economy came to a sudden halt because of the pandemic. The debate continues as to how deep it will be; its duration; and how far its impacts will reach. The pandemic has caused contractions across the vast majority of emerging market and developing economies as well as advanced economies. Lasting damage to labor productivity and potential output are already well identified. Across the world it would seem there is strong consensus for immediate policy priorities of alleviation of the human costs and attenuation of the short-term economic losses. Thereafter, once the crisis abates, there is also consensus that it will be necessary to reaffirm a credible commitment to policies to support long-term sustainable development. The COVID-19 recession's speed and depth with which it has struck suggests the possibility of a sluggish recovery. For many emerging market and developing countries, however, effective financial support and mitigation measures are particularly hard to achieve because a substantial share of employment is in informal sectors. The speed with which countries can overcome the pandemic health crisis and pave the way for economic recovery remains to be seen.

¹ World Bank President's end of year address to staff townhall, July 2, 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first global pandemic and it will not be the last, may almost be cliché now. Countries, especially low- and middle-income countries (LIC and MIC), are at the time of writing, fully focused on dealing with the severe health and economic crises. Generally, immediate priorities are budgetary support, health and food security. Beyond recovery, all nations, and development partners, must turn their respective foci to future preparedness to ensure that nations can better withstand the shocks of any future pandemic, with the impacts minimized to the greatest extent possible and recovery enabled in the shortest possible timeframe. However, no degree of preparedness can prevent future pandemics or disasters. Preparedness should include investment in land administration systems (LAS) and national spatial data infrastructures (NSDI).

The WB and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have partnered in many countries to promote the fundamental roles of LAS and NSDI to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and also for improving disaster resilience at the national, city and community levels, in line with the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) [2] and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30 [3].

2.2 Emergencies – Disasters and Pandemics

There are some similarities between the impacts of shocks created by a natural disaster and those created by disease – but only some. No country, regardless of its level of social and economic development is immune from the increasing frequency and severity of emergencies caused by disasters and pandemics. The World Health Organization ([4], p. 22) has prepared a very comprehensive Classification of Hazards, covering disasters, pandemics, conflicts and environmental degradation. From the disaster perspective it has consistency with the Sendai Framework, which sets out the case for all development to be risk-informed in order to be sustainable.

The Disaster Management Cycle, which originates from the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)² is widely utilized. Over the past decade, the Disaster Management Cycle, has been interpreted, modified and adopted by many agencies around the world. Recently, with health crises, including the current pandemic, even WHO has adopted an equivalent 4-phase cycle [4] – Preparation, Response, Recovery and Mitigation. Understanding the cycle, enables a better appreciation of where geospatial information and land administration can be effectively applied in terms of response and building resilience, which is discussed later in this Chapter.

2.3 Economic and Financial Impacts of Disasters and Pandemics

Direct economic losses from disasters have increased by more than 150 percent over the past 20 years, with losses disproportionately borne by vulnerable developing countries. The bill from natural disasters had reached around US$200 billion per year, an increase of 4 times since the 1980s. However, it is estimated that this has now risen to around US$300 billion per year. Cumulatively, over the past 30-year period, disasters have cost nearly US$4 trillion and caused around 2.5 million deaths. Two-thirds of these losses are due to extreme storms, floods and drought [4].

² Noted by [5].

WHO has advised that over the previous 30 years, more than 80 percent of deaths from natural disasters occurred in LIC and MIC and that the disaster impacts on GDP was on average 20 times higher in LIC than high-income countries (HIC). Further, and from the health perspective, WHO reported that during 2012-17, there were 1,200 health outbreaks in 168 countries, including those due to new or re-emerging infectious diseases. In 2018, a further 352 infectious disease events, including the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and the Ebola virus disease. Estimated losses from infectious diseases, through their effects on productivity, trade and travel, have been calculated at about US$500 billion or 6 percent of global income per year [4].

The WB [6] has identified critical impacts of the current pandemic. These are summarized as follows, with specific implications for land administr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Editors
• List of Contributors
• I Setting the Scene
• II Technical and Techno-Social Solutions
• III Regional, Country and Local Applications
• IV Stakeholder Perspectives
• V The Future Direction
• Index