Labs: Innovative solutions to transform how countries prepare and pay for disasters
When a major disaster strikes, countries and organisations either have to raid their health, education and social spending budgets, take on more debt or rely on slow and unpredictable humanitarian aid. None of these are good options: they undermine development progress and economic growth, while debt, response costs and needs spiral out of control.
Thinking ahead and arranging finance in advance changes this familiar story. When Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica, funding was already in place. The financing response was fast and credible enough that even a shock equivalent to around 40% of GDP did not derail a planned sovereign credit rating upgrade by Moody’s. For organisations funding health systems, education, or economic resilience in disaster-prone regions, pre-arranged finance is what can protect investments when a shock arrives.
Most countries are not in Jamaica’s position, yet. The technical barriers to designing and implementing these mechanisms remain out of reach for the countries that need them most. Labs, the Centre for Disaster Protection’s new innovation platform, exists to change that.
Labs is built on a decade of experience working with governments and international organisations on why pre-arranged disaster finance is hard to implement in practice. Its model is to co-design practical, open-source technologies with governments, international organisations, and disaster risk agencies, so that the knowledge and capacity required to plan and finance disasters in advance does not depend on a team of international experts being in the room. Everything Labs produces is open-source, designed to be used and adapted well beyond a single project cycle, and available to any government or organisation that needs it.
While billions are committed to disaster finance each year, the people and places furthest from the data tend to be furthest from the money. But, a rapid expansion in open data — satellites, AI-enhanced datasets — has made it possible to see what exists on the ground, who isn’t being reached, and what recovery actually costs. We can now connect that data to the financial decisions that shape whether a community rebuilds in weeks or years, and do this at scale. That is where Labs is focused.
Countries do not need another internationally-designed tool handed to them. They need solutions their teams can use and defend internally without ongoing external support, and that they have had a hand in shaping. Labs convenes small design teams that bring together government officials, international organisations, technical specialists, practitioners and community members from the outset, because the countries carrying the most disaster risk are also the ones best placed to know what will work in their context.
Labs draws on a decade of relationships the Centre for Disaster Protection has built alongside countries, humanitarian and regional institutions across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. The UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has committed initial seed funding to Labs. Foundations active in adjacent areas, including parametric insurance and climate risk finance, have engaged the Centre to help them evaluate what they are already funding, and others are looking into ways to protect what they already fund from increasingly frequent and costly shocks.
If your organisation funds health, education, economic resilience, or climate adaptation in crisis-prone regions and wants to understand where disaster finance connects to that portfolio, or if you are looking to back country-owned solutions with reach beyond a single funding cycle, we would like to work with you to ensure countries can explore better ways to plan and pay for the disasters they face.
Get in touch at labs@disasterprotection.org.
