Around 68.5 million people are currently forcibly displaced. The implementation and monitoring of international agreements, which are linked to the 2030 agenda (e.g., the Sendai Framework), require a standard set of metrics for internal displacement. Since nationally owned, validated, and credible data are difficult to obtain, new approaches are needed. This article aims to support the monitoring of displacement via satellite-derived observations of nighttime lights (NTL) from NASA's Black Marble product suite along with an short message service (SMS)-based emergency survey after Cyclone Idai had made landfall in Beira, Mozambique, in March 2019. Under certain conditions, the spatial extent of power outages can serve as a proxy for disaster impacts and a potential driver for displacement. Hence, information about anomalies in NTL has the potential to support humanitarian decision-making via estimations of people affected or the coordination of rapid response teams. Despite initial issues related to cloud cover, we find that around 90% of Beira's power grid had been affected. In collaboration with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, we use these findings to establish a framework that links NTL observations with existing humanitarian decision-making workflows to complement ground-based survey data and other satellite-derived information, such as flood or damage maps.
Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) are geophysical records generated from systematic Earth Observations associated with climate variations, changes, and impacts. ECVs products support the data and information needs of international frameworks and policies such as the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We map the main networks and initiatives publishing ECVs, by presenting an overview of existing satellite-based ECVs, their general data creation characteristics, discoverability and accessibility methods from an end-user perspective. We investigate key initiatives providing or coordinating access to ECV data records, such as the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), Joint Working Group on Climate (WGClimate), the Remote Sensing Systems (REMSS), and the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI). We find that ECV data discovery and access is difficult and time consuming due to the lack of common data and metadata catalogues. In addition, the selection of fit-for-purpose data records by end-users requires the implementation of interoperable standards and scalable data infrastructures to allow the generation of tailored applications and datadriven information products in support of decision-making processes.
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