South Africa’s National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) approached the CSIR to assist in its preparations to support local municipalities in their response to the COVID-19 disaster and mitigate all possible risks. The focus of the support was to provide conceptual and guiding input to the approach centre’s to the national crisis.

The CSIR had collaborated with the NMDC on the development of The Green Book, an online tool focusing on adaption planning for settlement within municipalities in the face of climate change from 2017 to 2019. The Green Book project was co-funded by the International Development Research Centre in Canada and the CSIR.

In addition to the conceptual input, CSIR experts in urban and regional dynamics supported the NMDC with the spatial mapping of vulnerable communities to COVID-19. This was packaged in a spatial-dashboard (web-based geographical information systems) environment to show how and where the NDMC should focus its efforts.

The CSIR has resources and capabilities that made this research possible. The group’s focus is on planning and decision support, and developing planning support systems.

“A planning support system can take on various forms, but it always has a strong spatial analysis underpinning. It is this capability combined with a deep understanding of risk vulnerability analysis of human settlements that allowed us to develop the vulnerability index,” says Gerbrand Mans, CSIR research group leader of the urban and regional dynamics research group.

View the vulnerability dashboard.