Anadia Project Archives - climateservices.it CNR-IBE

Bridging the communication gap in agrometeorological services: Enhancing the uptake and effectiveness for users in developing countries

Web Editor — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:50:50 +0000

Over the past decades, advancements in agrometeorological monitoring and forecasting have been driven by technology, infrastructure, and capacity building. Literature highlights that agrometeorological services support agricultural decision-making, boosting farmers’ resilience and income globally. However, challenges in communication and dissemination limit their effectiveness, particularly for smallholder farmers in remote areas. The problem extends beyond media type and format to issues of accessibility, comprehensibility, and users’ trust. While technology has enabled faster dissemination, there is a risk of new services being technology-centered rather than user-focused. This non-systematic literature review delves into effective communication strategies for agrometeorological information in developing countries, reviewing existing knowledge and presenting case studies. It addresses how to ensure access to information, identify efficient communication channels, use inclusive technologies, enhance users’ understanding, make information actionable, and gather feedback on information effectiveness. Stakeholders’ engagement methods include a variety of participatory approaches and iterative monitoring, evaluation and learning processes. The choice of communication channels significantly affects information reach. Despite the rise of ICT, challenges in access and understanding persist, especially for marginalized groups, making simple communication technologies like rural radios still crucial for last-mile dissemination. The review emphasizes that no single communication approach fits all situations. Key principles of coproduction and user engagement in climate services are essential for effective agrometeorological communication. Future directions include enhancing the legitimacy and salience of services by integrating local knowledge, expanding scope to include herders and off-farm stakeholders, building capacity among intermediaries and users, soliciting feedback, and fostering public–private partnerships for scaling and sustainability.

Keywords: Agricultural Meteorology; Communication; Climate Services; Co-production; Stakeholders engagement; Best practices

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The added value of the process in climate services co-production: Lessons from Niger

Vieri Tarchiani — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 10:08:35 +0000

Climate services are recognized as an essential tool for sustainable development in strategic and climate-sensitive sectors. In developing countries, particularly in Africa, the literature offers successful examples of application, especially in the agricultural sector, which is dramatically sensitive to climate variability and change. While, initially, particular emphasis was placed on the outcomes of these services and the benefits they provide to users, several authors, more recently, have focused their attention on the process. A climate service is understood as a cyclical process in which the different actors interact, exchange knowledge, and establish relationships and mutual trust. This co-production process serves primarily to bridge the gap between science and society and is particularly appropriate for developing countries. Several authors claim the benefit of the co-production process improving the service usability, but rarely the intrinsic value of the process is recognized. This study aims to describe the process and document its added value using the example of Niger as a case study, where two services addressing drought and floods have recently been developed, tested, and operationalized. This experience allows for inferring lessons that can be useful for researchers and practitioners in developed and developing contexts. The value of the collaboration between different disciplines (transdisciplinarity) and roles (complementarity), and the iterative and interactive learning process emerge as key elements allowing a continuous improvement of the services and the strengthened relationship among actors. The results of this process, albeit qualitatively described in the paper, could guide researchers and practitioners in adopting such an approach and could represent a tangible example for funders and policymakers of the process’s added value. Nevertheless, the article recognizes the need to develop a methodological framework for quali/quantitatively assessing the added value of the co-production process and suggests four dimensions to be considered in further research. Finally, the paper recommends the capitalization of pilot experiences through the national and global frameworks for climate services.

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Field survey data on the effectiveness of agrometeorological services for smallholder farmers in Niger

Web Editor — Tue, 16 May 2023 12:29:06 +0000

The dataset contains the answers of smallholder farmers to a semi-structured field survey and the 2020 yield plot measurements conducted in 8 municipalities of the Dosso and Tillabéri regions in Niger. It is a systematic sampling of about 320 questionnaires and 192 yield plot samples equally distributed in eight municipalities of intervention. The dataset contains several pieces of information about the uptake and the impacts of a tailored climate service (CS) produced by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) and disseminated through a network that involves Ministry of Agriculture extension services at the municipal level developed in the context of the AdaptatioN Au changement Climatique, prévention des catastrophes et Développement agricole pour la sécurité Alimentaire du Niger (ANADIA) Project. The material gathered by the survey gives a picture of the preferences of local farmers in the broadcasting of climate services information and their consequent strategical and tactical decisions in farm practices. Moreover, the survey investigates the preferences regarding the information that farmers would like to receive during the cropping season. Furthermore, the measurement of yield and its relation to the farmers’ access to climate information and participation in training initiatives gives an indication of the impact of the CS on agricultural production in these regions.

The dataset could benefit further studies and investigations about CSs for smallholder farmers in semi-arid regions.

This article is a co-submission of the article: “Effectiveness of agrometeorological services for smallholder farmers: the case study in the regions of Dosso and Tillabéri in Niger” submitted to the journal Climate Services.

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Evaluation of the Impact of Seasonal Agroclimatic Information Used for Early Warning and Farmer Communities’ Vulnerability Reduction in Southwestern Niger

Web Editor — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 16:12:54 +0000

In Niger (a fully Sahelian country), the use of climate information is one of the early warning strategies (EWSs) for reducing socio-economic vulnerabilities in farmer communities. It helps farmers to better anticipate risks and choose timely alternative options that can allow them to generate more profit. This study assesses the impacts of the use of climate information and services that benefit end-users. Individual surveys and focus groups were conducted with a sample of 368 people in eight communes in Southwestern Niger. The survey was conducted within the framework of the ANADIA project implemented by the National Meteorological Direction (NMD) of Niger. The survey aims to identify different types of climate services received by communities and evaluates the major benefits gained from their use. Mostly, the communities received climate (73.6%) and weather (99%) information on rainfall, temperature, dust, wind, clouds, and air humidity. Few producers in the area (10%) received information on seasonal forecasts of the agrometeorological characteristics of the rainy season. The information is not widely disseminated in the villages during the roving seminars conducted by the NMD. For most people, this information is highly relevant to their needs because of its practical advice for options to be deployed to mitigate disasters for agriculture, livestock, health, water resources, and food security. In those communities, 82% of farmers have (at least once) changed their routine practices as a result of the advice and awareness received according to the climate information. The information received enables farmers (64.4%) to adjust their investments according to the profile of the upcoming rainfall season. The use of climate information and related advice led to an increase of about 64 bunches (equivalent to 10 bags of 100 kg) in annual millet production, representing an income increase of about 73,000 FCFA from an average farmland of 3 ha per farmer. In addition, the use of climate information helps to reduce the risks of floods and droughts, which often cause massive losses to crop production, animal and human life, infrastructure, materials, and goods. It has also enabled communities to effectively manage seeds and animal foods and to plan social events, departures and returns to rural exodus. These analyses confirm that the use of climate information serves as an EWS that contributes to increasing the resilience of local populations in the Sahel.

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Effectiveness of agrometeorological services for smallholder farmers: The case study in the regions of Dosso and Tillabéri in Niger

Web Editor — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 11:01:23 +0000

The increasing frequency of extreme events in West Africa, such as droughts and floods, has made populations that base their subsistence mostly on rainfed agriculture even more vulnerable to climate threats. Climate Services (CS) are largely acknowledged as effective tools for tackling climate risks in agriculture, particularly in semi-arid developing countries but evidence of their effectiveness is still jeopardized. In Niger, a climate service (CS) has been set up in the regions of Dosso and Tillabéri by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) to provide salient information for smallholder farmers. The CS was built on a robust collaboration among NMS, local extension services and authorities and farmers in 8 municipalities. The case study shows that a large share of farmers receives throughout the cropping season climatic information and advice via roving seminars and various media, including instant messaging services and radio broadcasts. Nevertheless, the results indicate that access to CS alone doesn’t imply relevant positive impacts on crop yields while the training of farmers in the use of the information results be a significant factor. Indeed, in 2020, the yields of trained farmers are significantly higher by around 17% compared to those of non-trained ones. Training and iterative interaction between farmers and NMS could also have indirect effects on information uptake, contributing to building reciprocal trust and therefore stronger action by trained farmers. The study confirms the importance of the social learning process in CS co-development. Since the study is limited by the small sample and the dataset covering only one cropping season, further research is needed to deepen cost-benefit analysis and disentangle the relative contribution of the CS components to yield increase. Indeed, evidence of the positive impact of CS could represent leverage for local governments and international funders to support CS co-development and related capacity-building activities.

Practical implication

Climate variability and a strong increase in extreme hydrometeorological events are affecting agriculture production and exacerbating food insecurity in West Africa. In Niger, the vulnerability of agricultural production systems is coupled with ecosystem fragility and soil degradation. In this area, the rural population is the most vulnerable to climate threats because they have a reduced capability to implement effective risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies and the national government has limited resources to invest in climate policies. The CS implemented for the regions of Dosso and Tillabéri in Niger demonstrates that it is possible to set up an effective network for disseminating agrometeorological information for smallholder farmers at the municipal level with the aim of reducing the impact of climate threats on agriculture production. The information produced by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) is spread through extension services and rural radios to reach farmers. At the same time, the agrometeorological field data are collected by local farmers and sent to the national service, ensuring the continuous monitoring of the cropping season. Subsequently, the agrometeorological information is coupled with setting up roving seminars in each municipality to spread tailored advice for farmers concerning seasonal climate forecasts and to build capacities in the use of agrometeorological advice during the season. During these seminars, rain gauges are also distributed to farmers and their use is explained. In this way, farmers become able to autonomously take some tactical decisions, such as better timing the sowing of crops or performing farming activities, basing these choices on direct observations. The present case study demonstrates that the mere receipt of the climate information is not clearly related to an increase in yields; contrariwise, farmers who received training on how to properly use the information, have significantly higher yields. Repeated capacity building and information distribution over the years represent an element of trust building for end users who are more prone to use these CS in their agricultural choices, integrating their traditional knowledge. The next challenge is to guarantee the sustainability of these networks over time, because, even if advances in technology could reduce the costs of the production and distribution of climate services, the training activities and maintaining the rural observation network are challenging. A possible way to make it sustainable is to reinforce institutional collaboration. Moreover, the use of a participatory approach in co-designing the CS could be a key element in pursuing the active involvement of the local population and administrations and could increase their motivation in the data exchange process. Based on obtained results, the authors recommend pursuing the development of tailored CS for smallholder farmers in similar rural contexts, since these services constitute a real contribution to climate change adaptation at the local level in rural areas and future experiences could ensure the fine-tuning of the climate information products, reducing delivery costs and increasing benefits for stakeholders. Finally, it is also recommended to further assess the cost/benefit ratio of CS in order to leverage funds and ensure scaling up and sustainability.

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Participatory risk assessment of pluvial floods in four towns of Niger

Web Editor — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 13:46:41 +0000

Intense rainfalls in Sub-Saharan Africa are increasing in frequency. Land degradation, watercourses siltation, and flood defence failure turn these events into disastrous floods. Over the last decade flood risk assessments have been prepared to face these disasters. However, they have frequent limitations in design, accuracy, and completeness. The objectives of this study are (i) to integrate local and scientific knowledge into a participated pluvial flood risk assessment (ii) to identify assets and (iii) to estimate the potential impact and efficiency of risk-reduction measures. The assessment is developed in four rapidly expanding towns of Niger, which flooded several times in recent years. Flood-prone areas and assets are identified according to four flood scenarios using local knowledge, 2D hydraulic modelling, and visual photointerpretation of very-high-resolution satellite images. Risk-reduction measures are singled-out through public participation. The residual risk and benefit/cost analyses provide a decision-making tool to accept or treat risk. During the last decade, the expansion of the four towns has been more rapid in flood-prone zones than in safe areas. Nowadays more than half of the housing stock could be flooded by rainfalls with 20 years return period. Catchment treatment and building retrofitting can reduce risk. from 100 to 29–82. Nevertheless, the benefit/cost of risk reduction is high for towns settled in small catchments only.

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Hydrological Web Services for Operational Flood Risk Monitoring and Forecasting at Local Scale in Niger

Web Editor — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 15:19:17 +0000

Emerging hydrological services provide stakeholders and political authorities with useful and reliable information to support the decision-making process and develop flood risk management strategies. Most of these services adopt the paradigm of open data and standard web services, paving the way to increase distributed hydrometeorological services’ interoperability. Moreover, sharing of data, models, information, and the use of open-source software, greatly contributes to expanding the knowledge on flood risk and to increasing flood preparedness. Nevertheless, services’ interoperability and open data are not common in local systems implemented in developing countries. This paper presents the web platform and related services developed for the Local Flood Early Warning System of the Sirba River in Niger (SLAPIS) to tailor hydroclimatic information to the user’s needs, both in content and format. Building upon open-source software components and interoperable web services, we created a software framework covering data capture and storage, data flow management procedures from several data providers, real-time web publication, and service-based information dissemination. The geospatial infrastructure and web services respond to the actual and local decision-making context to improve the usability and usefulness of information derived from hydrometeorological forecasts, hydraulic models, and real-time observations. This paper presents also the results of the three years of operational campaigns for flood early warning on the Sirba River in Niger. Semiautomatic flood warnings tailored and provided to end-users bridge the gap between available technology and local users’ needs for adaptation, mitigation, and flood risk management, and make progress toward sustainable development goals.

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Dataset on the expansion and consolidation of flooded settlements in the Dosso Region, Niger

Web Editor — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 09:06:57 +0000

Flood risk reduction at the local scale requires knowledge of the settlements which are most exposed to floods, and those where the existing measures are insufficient to handle the threats. The knowledge on spatial dynamics of the flooded human settlements is limited, especially that of the smaller ones, such as the settlements in the sub-Saharan Africa. The dataset on 122 flooded settlements in the Dosso Region (Niger) offers information on: the built-up area and the number of buildings with corrugated iron roofs in 2004, 2012, and 2019 (average dates), the type of human settlements (city, rural town, village, or hamlet), the flood dates and the number of buildings collapsed between 2011 and 2019. The data on the built-up area and the number of buildings with corrugated iron roofs were extracted by visual photointerpretation from very high-resolution images accessible through Google Earth Pro. The information on the settlement category was obtained from the Human Settlements National Directory (French acronym, ReNaLoc) published by the National Institute of Statistics of Niger. The dates of floods and the data on the number of collapsed buildings were obtained from the open-access national database on flooding, known by the French acronym, BDINA. These data can be reused to build a geodatabase for flood risk reduction and to draft the municipal and regional development plans. Their potential reuse allows for the identification of settlements undergoing the most rapid physical expansion, built-up area in a flood-prone zone, and settlements that require protection and flood risk reduction policies. Additionally, the dataset can also be used to verify the accuracy of the built-up area obtained from the satellite images with coarse resolution and for comparisons with other regions in Niger and in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Method for pluvial flood risk assessment in rural settlements characterised by scant information availability

Web Editor — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:20:37 +0000

In tropical regions, heavy precipitations may lead to catastrophic flooding due to the degradation of catchments and the expansion of settlements in flood prone zones. In the current situation, where information on rainfall and exposed assets is either scant, or requires significant time to be collected, pluvial flood risk assessments are conducted using participatory tools, without any scientific support. Another option is to use satellite precipitation products, digital terrain models and satellite images at high to moderate-resolution.

However, these datasets do not reach the required accuracy at the local scale. Consequently, the potential damages and the evaluation component of risk assessment are often missing. Risk evaluation is pivotal for informed decision-making, with regards to the choice of treating or accepting the risk, implementing more effective measures, and for determining the safest areas for development. We proposed an improved method for assessing the risk of pluvial floods, which merges local and scientific knowledge and is consistent with the ISO 31010 standard. The method was successfully applied in five rural settlements in Niger and can be replicated in areas where information is scarce.

Keywords: Africa; Built-up expansion; Disaster risk reduction; Runoff; Dosso region; Local knowledge; Niger; Community participation; Participatory mapping; Residual risk; Risk evaluation; Risk reduction; Risk treatment; Traditional knowledge

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Floodplain Settlement Dynamics in the Maouri Dallol at Guéchémé, Niger: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Web Editor — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 07:28:16 +0000

In Sahelian Africa, rural centers have been hit by catastrophic floods for many years. In order to prevent the impact of flooding, the flood-prone areas and the settlement dynamics within them must be identified. The aim of this study is to ascertain the floodplain settlement dynamics in the Maouri valley (135 km2) in the municipality of Guéchémé, Niger. Through hydraulic modeling, the analysis identified the flood-prone areas according to three return periods. The dynamics of the settlements in these areas between 2009 and 2019 were identified through the photointerpretation of high-resolution satellite images and compared with those in the adjacent non-flood-prone areas. Spatial planning was applied to extract the main dynamics. The synergic application of these disciplines in a rural context represents a novelty in the research field. Since 2009, the results have shown a 52% increase of the built-up area and a 12% increase in the number of buildings, though the increase was higher in the flood-prone areas. The factors that transform floods into catastrophes were identified through perceptions gathered from the local communities. Three dynamics of the expansion and consolidation of buildings were observed. Specific flood risk prevention and preparation actions are proposed for each type of dynamic.

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