Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Collaboration Meeting Report

The meeting brought together 18 participants representing the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the FEWS NET Early Warning (EW) team, the Learning and Data Hub (Hub) team, and the Science team (USGS, UCSB, NOAA, and NASA). The meeting opened with a welcome and an overview of the agenda. USAID presented a reporting template for joint annual work planning (JAWP) quarterly meetings. The template follows a consistent structure for each bilateral activity, including expected results, progress to date, and next actions. USAID also described the first JAWP quarterly meeting, which will occur in the first week of February 2021, and encouraged implementing partners to coordinate separately prior to the full team session. Each team provided brief updates on bilateral collaboration activities. The EW and Hub teams reported on several data activities, including a country case study and monthly sprints. The Hub will modify the Discovery template specific to the Price Bulletin deliverable and send it to the EW team to fill out. The Science team's role in the country case study was highlighted as an important question to discuss during the upcoming JAWP meeting. The Science and Hub teams reported on two collaboration activities, including crop tours and FAO and NASA Harvest's COVID-19 dashboards. The Hub will support the Science team's crop tour work by identifying data needs and providing effective support. The Hub also provided feedback and knowledge exchange with external partners, giving insight into additional data requirements for the FEWS NET Data Warehouse. The Science and EW teams reported on three collaborative activities, including trainings, updates to the Early Warning eXplorer, and support for field requests. The EW team's Washington office continues to collaborate with USGS on mapping units in the Early Warning eXplorer. USGS responded to field requests from Colombia, work that is expected to continue in upcoming quarters. USAID reported on three internal Science team collaborative activities, including forecasts, scientific presentations, and scientific publications. Scientists continue to develop the March-April-May forecasts for East Africa. Several Science team members co-authored and presented their research at the American Geophysical Union Fall 2020 meeting. The Science team members co-authored a new PLOS ONE publication, and the Science team and Hub agreed to discuss options for improving capture and sharing of Science team publications. The Hub introduced Stephanie Foerster, Co-Founder and President of Ensemble Media, who will facilitate consensus building among the Project's partners to support development of the FEWS NET Outreach Strategy. USAID explained that the strategy is an Implementation Year 2 (IY2) deliverable under the Hub's Task Order 1 language, which requires the Hub to define and implement an external-facing data and knowledge management strategy and outreach plan to facilitate the use of FEWS NET datasets, products, and innovations by non-FEWS NET team-member parties. The Hub provided a working definition of outreach as effective engagement and messaging that provides knowledge and data assets to meet the needs of specific audiences. The Hub emphasized that the Project's resources and assets are vast, as shown in Table 1. The Outreach Strategy will identify the data needs of FEWS NET's audiences both within and beyond USAID. The Hub will start this process by collating documents from prior investigation work, such as the Hub's Stakeholder Consultations and website redesign discovery. The Hub will also engage with implementing partners to gather input and feedback on the Outreach Strategy concept note. The Outreach Strategy will be developed through a collaborative process, with the goal of identifying the potential promise and eventual utility of FEWS NET datasets, products, and innovations to meet new user needs.