Short-term Consultant on Knowledge Management

About Asian Disaster Preparedness Center

ADPC is an autonomous international organization with a vision to reduce disaster and climate risk impacts on communities and countries in Asia and the Pacific by working with governments, development partners, international organizations, NGOs, civil society, private sector, media, and other key stakeholders. Established in 1986 as a technical capacity building center, ADPC has grown and diversified its expertise across social and physical sciences to support sustainable solutions for risk reduction across a broad range of specialist areas. With over 100 staff from 19 different nationalities and a wide range of professional expertise from atmospheric scientists to social scientists with experiences from all levels of engagement typically required for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Resilience (CR) in an effective manner. ADPC is a competent regional resource center and has seven thematic departments: ADPC Academy, Risk Governance, Climate Resilience, Urban Resilience, Health Risk Management, Preparedness for Response and Recovery, Geospatial Information. These are supported by Finance, Human Resources and Administration, and Strategic Planning departments. In addition to the departments, ADPC works on three cross-cutting themes: Gender and Diversity, Poverty and Livelihoods, and Regional and Transboundary Cooperation through permanent working committees. ADPC Strategy 2020 guides the organization in providing comprehensive risk reduction support to countries and communities in Asia and the Pacific. ADPC recognizes the importance of examining the linkages between disaster risk management, poverty reduction, gender equality, sustainability, rights-based approaches, climate change and regional cooperation. For details, please refer to ADPC website at http://www.adpc.net/

Background

The World Bank has recently approved the project on Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CARE) in South Asia, a $39.5 million initiative that will be jointly implemented by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) and the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES). The overall aim of the project is to build resilience to climate change risks by sharing regional data and knowledge, developing regional standards and guidelines for infrastructure, and promoting climate-resilient policies and investments. The target sectors under this project ─agriculture, transport, water, planning, and finance─ will be piloted in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. ADPC is entrusted for the component 2 focusing on Enabling Climate Resilient Policies and Standards for Development with the following sub-components:

1. Advisory services for policy and investment interventions;
2. Promoting Climate Resilient Design and Standards;
3. Implementation Support to Climate-Risk Management Solutions;
4. Innovation for Climate Adaptation and Resilience Knowledge Management Information and knowledge shape the quality of every policy, decision and commitment.

A regular and reliable flow of information about how climate change affects peoples' basic needs─water, food, shelter, health, education, economy, security, mobility─ and countries' progress is vital to change the way people perceive this threat. In this backdrop, an awareness-raising campaign focusing on agriculture, integrated water resource management, road infrastructure, and climate finance planning will be developed to stimulate dialogue on climate adaptation and resilience for South Asia.

South Asia Region Climate Knowledge Hub

The campaign is a 5-year plan under the CARE for South Asia project. As part of the campaign, a digital platform (website) will be established to facilitate knowledge sharing and dialogue about climate-sensitive sectors. The hub will give the project team easy access to past and updated information on key sectors and help achieve the project’s goal of sharing knowledge with a broader audience. The hub is an essential outcome of the project that will serve as a tool to reinforcing the project’s long-term objective: contribute to an enabling environment for climate resilience policies and investments in select sectors and countries in South Asia. The website will also share best practices on climate-resilient planning, and investment approaches in South Asia by hosting sector-specific knowledge products and the latest developments in implementing the Paris Agreement by South Asian countries. It will host information and knowledge on a range of topics and sectors including climate-smart agriculture, integrated water resources management, resilient transport infrastructure, policy, planning and finance, and gender and diversity. The Knowledge Hub will serve as a dependable information resource for interested stakeholders: national governments, UN agencies, IGOs, practitioners, the private sector, academic and knowledge institutions, and students.

It will help achieve the following specific objectives:

• Decision-makers and other interested stakeholders have an easy access to country-specific past and up-to-date information about climate change adaptation in select sectors in South Asia;
• South Asian countries are able to access contextualized sector-specific information available with governments and other stakeholders;
• Latest developments in sectors across South Asia are available to enable evidence-based policy and decision making.

Scope

The consultant will be expected to produce the pre-determined deliverables in line with the Terms of Reference of this assignment by performing specific tasks as outlined in the following section. Note: It is not the intent of this Terms of Reference to cover every aspect of the position requirements, rather to highlight the most important areas of the assignment.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Consultant will be responsible to undertake the following specific tasks in order to be able to produce deliverables as listed in section E of this ToR.

• Develop a 5-year information and knowledge management strategic framework for the knowledge hub, which sets out required inputs, governance arrangements, roles and responsibilities, principles, policies, guidelines, operating procedures, performance indicators, and monitoring;
• Develop a mechanism of collecting, receiving, and sourcing information considering copyrights, licensing, and other legal obligations; and formalize knowledge sharing arrangements;
• Develop a strategy for collection of publicly available information (including the required due diligence for such collection) as per thematic areas of the CARE for South Asia project from relevant sub-regional, regional, international organizations, and partners. Documents may include but are not limited to legislation, policies, strategies, plans, best practices, guidelines, tools, frameworks, agreements, case studies, research papers, and reports in the region;
• Create metadata to ensure documents, videos, and images are described according to the highest standards and provide all the information a visitor needs;
• Coordinate with website designer and developer to ensure the design and technology is compatible with the knowledge base content, objectives, and is user friendly;
• Develop an instructional manual for management and operational system of security and controls over the Knowledge Hub;
• Develop knowledge products to populate the knowledge hub. This includes but is not limited to copywriting for each page (SAR’s climate change and adaptation profile, countries and sectors climate adaptation profiles, blogs, videos, news section, and training opportunities, etc.);
• Compile information, data, or materials to feed into the production of knowledge products;
• Develop a one-year communications strategy to promote knowledge hub through ADPC and partners' social media channels and formulate social media messages;
• Develop a plan to launch the knowledge hub and assist in organizing the launch event;
• Perform any other relevant tasks assigned by the Project Director.

Deliverables

1. Information and knowledge management strategic framework developed;
2. Set of key policies, framework, plans for each SAR country and key sectors organized along with short description for each;
3. One regional profile and 8 country profiles on climate change adaptation and resilience in South Asia developed;
4. Communication strategy for the knowledge hub developed;
5. A fully functional knowledge hub developed along with a user-friendly instructional manual for management and operational system of security and controls over the Knowledge Hub (with support from web designer);
6. Concept note on the launch of the knowledge hub, organize the launch event and produce a post-launch report.

Qualifications

• Education Master's in knowledge management, communications or any other related field.

Work Experience

• At least 5-7 years of professional experience knowledge management, or website content development and management;
• Demonstrated understanding of knowledge management principles and capacity to deliver knowledge management and/or organizational learning activities;
• Ability to link content development and engagement strategies that facilitate timely, useful delivery of information through project learning platforms and activities;
• Proficient in a large number of computer applications related to website and knowledge management;
• Good understanding of climate change adaption and resilience (understanding and knowledge about climate change in South Asia will be considered as an advantage);
• Excellent command on English language (both oral and written).

Reporting

The Consultant will report to the CARE Project Director and work closely with the ADPC’s communication team on a day-to-day basis.