KATHMANDU: Every year, Nepal suffers from a significant loss of life, physical assets, livelihoods, and environmental damage due to natural and non-natural disasters.

To aid in disaster risk reduction and management activities effectively, the Government of Nepal has developed an integrated and comprehensive Disaster Information Management System locally known as Building Information Platform Against Disaster (BIPAD) portal, http://bipadportal.gov.np.

The one-stop platform has been developed with the concept of creating a national portal embedded with independent platforms for national, provincial, and municipal governments with a bottom-up approach of disaster data partnership.

The government of Nepal has put BIPAD portal in place, however, its localization has been a challenge. Through Disaster Risk Reduction – Young Leaders Fellowship (DRR-Fellowship), an initiative of Youth Innovation Lab, young engineers, environment and DRR graduates have been mobilized and placed at municipal governments to communicate risk at the local level, sensitize the need for data for informed decision making and enhance the technical capacity of local governments.

So far, 21 DRR fellows have been placed at 21 municipal governments covering all seven provinces where they have supported in data collection of critical infrastructures such as education, health, communication, open spaces, governance, and more and their digitization in BIPAD portal, and supported the local governments for policy formation.

Youth Innovation Lab, with the financial support from USAID’s Tayar Nepal, has launched the application call for DRR-Fellowship for 15 additional municipalities. These municipalities were identified based on their vulnerabilities to the disasters such as floods, landslides, and earthquakes covering seven provinces and three geographical regions.

15 selected candidates will be placed at the project municipalities for the duration of six months where they will work closely with the municipalities’ DRR focal person and IT officer.

They will further assist in the day-to-day capacity transfer and support the municipality to collect, digitize and validate disaster-related datasets and integrate them into BIPAD portal, fostering an effective data partnership mechanism to enhance their preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery activities.

Bijaya Sharma, Project Coordinator at Youth Innovation Lab said DRR-Fellowship has been a great platform in transferring technical capacity, and it has been evident that deploying youth who are technically sound to support government capacity has become an effective medium to institutionalize technical knowledge at the local level.

The fellowship has provided DRR enthusiasts with an opportunity to gain in-depth experience in preparedness and management to support DRRM and to understand the government system and its working mechanism which has further motivated them to join government services.

Pradip Khatiwada, Executive Director at Youth Innovation Lab said the role of youth is crucial in supporting the government in designing actions and implementing them for disaster risk reduction and management.

Mobilizing young talent, knowledge, experiences, and energy can support in transferring cross-cutting technologies to the local level, capacitating the local governments, and assisting in post-disaster coordination Khatiwada added.