Design Tools
Experts in many countries and international organizations are using design tools to work through these questions.
Similar to designing an airplane, the design tools and adavanced analysis do not simply give the answers, but allow the experts to work together to design something mathematically sound, appropriate, and responsible, based on their expertise and mandates.
Below is an example of a tool to help evaluate a forecast generated by a national met office for different trigger frequencies. This was the tool that your exercises used. It is a design dashboard that has been used in real projets, that has been locked for consistency in training sessons.
To illustrate some of the points we discussed:
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Do you see 5 year periods with fewer than 2 triggers, more than 2 triggers?
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Drag the "Frequency of trigger events" slider to different frequencies to see the software calculate the different action levels
For more documentation on how this tool works, please see:
French: https://fist.iri.columbia.edu/publications/docs/WA_AA_General_Material_Update/
English: https://fist.iri.columbia.edu/publications/docs/Djibouti_AA_Tool_Guide/
This tool would be used as part of the process to design actions and triggers.
Once those are chosen, they are committed to and "frozen" before the forecasts for the coming year start.
Then a separate set of tools are used to moniter the forecasts, triggers, actions, and actual season outcomes. To see examples of that that click on the next slide button at the bottom of the page.
IF THE BOX BELOW IS BLANK, PASTE THIS URL INTO AN INCOGNITO WINDOW
https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/fbfmaproom2/training_dashboard?mode=0&map_column=prcp-v1&season=season1&predictors=prcp-v1+chirps-precip-jas&predictand=bad-years-humanitarian&year=2025&issue_month=apr&start_year=2000&freq=30&severity=0&include_upcoming=false&position=%5B19.25%2C-11.1%5D&show_modal=false