Sukaina Bharwani is co-leader of the SEI theme Reducing Climate Risk and has been a staff representative on the SEI Board. Sukaina Bharwani has a Ph.D. in Applied Computing (Social Sciences) and a BA (Hons) in Social Anthropology. Her inter-disciplinary research in Social Anthropology and Computer Science provides her with a unique range of qualitative and quantitative skills linking vulnerability, livelihoods, and adaptation with biophysical analyses in innovative ways (Kemp-Benedict et al.,2010). Her current research involves a country pilot study for the Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) programme, intended as a follow-on to the Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP) with the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. The new programme’s aim is to produce and enhance the availability and accessibility of robust and ‘decision relevant’ climate information products to inform climate-resilient investment, policy and strategies across sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies will focus on urban adaptation in coastal cities of Accra and Maputo. Her research focus on decision-making and integrating different types of knowledge has included work with Google.org to develop innovative methods for the visualisation and dissemination of climate adaptation information integrating Google Earth within weADAPT.org, resulting in the Adaptation Layer. Other innovative projects funded by CDKN, involve the linking of climate data to weADAPT, connecting it to climate data in the Climate Information Portal (CIP) and with communities of practise such as AfricaAdapt, and improving the semantic technology capabilities using a climate adaptation thesaurus developed by Reegle.
