Building a Humanitarian Testbed for Global Water and Food Security

Historically, engaging with decision-makers, farmers, fishermen and other stakeholders has resulted in substantial improvements in our understanding of atmospheric and climatic drivers, such as the discovery of fundamental aspects of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). However, while numerous papers address the importance of transitioning research to operations (R2O), very few papers or initiatives are dedicated to its sister process; the translation of user expertise to the research community (O2R). In addition, the dedication required by operational and response communities during emergencies hinders effective transfer of knowledge. A Humanitarian Testbed has the great potential to facilitate the transfer of expertise between researchers and humanitarian decision-makers before, during, and after extreme events

The advent of AI/ML places an even greater emphasis on the need for stronger information exchange with model developers and weather experts in data-sparse regions. Recent research articles have indeed indicated that training AI models on AI-generated data results in errors, and AI simulated data is not sufficient for significant data gaps.. As a result, a Humanitarian Testbed stands to benefit the entire research and operational modelling community by exchanging local knowledge and expertise to the broader modelling community and bridging crucial observational gaps.