Interview with Ahmadul Hassan (ConvSDG x Climate Centre)

I recently interviewed Ahmadul Hassan, a technical advisor for Forecast-Based Financing (FbF) in Bangladesh. He is an expert in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Mapping and Remote Sensing in Forecast Based Financing (FbF). During this interview, he talked about certain technical aspects of FbF, the problems faced while predicting forecasts for the implementation of the Early Action Protocol under FbF, and the improvements needed in the field of GIS.

Hassan highlighted how he faces many challenges while predicting scientific forecasts such as deciding which source to choose the forecast from (each source provides forecasts with different scales), getting access to the forecast - forecasts from more than a certain number of years ago are not accessible, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department having the mandate over the forecasts (reliance on getting the forecast from them), and not having access to a good scale forecast with a large lead time. He talked about how he faces these problems daily as his role at the RCCC is to bring the science into practice by recommending which forecast to use while deciding if the Early Action Protocol should be implemented.

Hassan also explained there is always a trade-off between lead time and the scale of the forecast. He talked about how the right balance has to also be established between these 2 factors to get the best outcome out of FbF. He also talked about the importance of the false alarm ratio (FAR) which is the ratio of the false alarms to the number of times for the forecast. Later during the interview, Hassan explained the role that GIS plays in FbF. He elucidated that "GIS is for the where part!" and provided information about the location where the disaster is expected to hit and its potential for impact. Lastly, he discussed how GIS needs more local data to increase the accuracy of FbF.