Turning local knowledge into life-saving maps: consensus-based risk mapping for anticipatory action in Ethiopia

Turning local knowledge into life-saving maps: consensus-based risk mapping for anticipatory action in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia’s Afar, Somali and Tigray regions, communities face an unrelenting cycle of shocks – drought, flooding, conflict, crop pests, and diseases including cholera and malaria – that erode development gains and deepen people’s vulnerability. Anticipatory action offers a way to break this cycle, but to be effective in these regions, it needs an ingredient that was, in the past, largely missing: reliable, up-to-date exposure and vulnerability data. This story explains how a practical, low-cost methodology filled this gap – and what it could mean for humanitarian actors operating in similarly data-scarce environments.

The data gap problem

When the regional anticipatory action technical working groups (RAATWGs) in Afar, Somali and Tigray met to develop multi-hazard early action protocols (EAPs), they hit a familiar wall: official data were outdated, incomplete or fragmented across multiple agencies. Furthermore, conventional data-collection methods were neither affordable nor feasible within the EAP development timeline. And some hazards affecting these regions, particularly conflict, are so dynamic and politically sensitive that traditional approaches to data generation cannot capture them at the granularity needed for district-level planning.

The question was not whether to act, but how to act without having to wait for data that might never be available.

The solution: structured expert-consensus scoring

Facilitated by the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and The Netherlands Red Cross, with funding from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department, the RAATWGs piloted a structured expert-consensus approach to generate risk maps at the woreda (district) or zonal level across all three regions.

The methodology was simple. Rather than relying on datasets that were unavailable or offered limited information on exposure and vulnerability, this process convened the people who know these landscapes best: technical experts from governmental sectors (agriculture, disaster risk management, health, meteorology, and water and sanitation), NGO practitioners, Red Cross staff and volunteers, UN agency staff, and representatives from community early-warning committees.

Each participant was asked one question: ‘On a scale of 0 to 5, how severely has this woreda been impacted by this hazard over the last five years compared to other woredas in the region, based on your experience and considering the number of people affected?’

Scores were aggregated to produce individual risk maps for different hazards, as well as a composite multi-hazard impact map showing the cumulative risk burden across all hazards per woreda. Crucially, this means they go beyond standard hazard maps to reflect the magnitude of impact on people, drawing on lived institutional memory rather than satellite imagery alone.

What the exercise produced – and why it matters

Between May and June 2025, mapping exercises were completed across all three regions:

• Afar: maps for five hazards in a pastoralist context where seasonal mobility makes conventional risk-profiling difficult. The exercise produced a unified spatial reference that had not previously existed.
• Somali: zonal-level maps for five hazards (due to the region’s large size), plus a composite risk map.
• Tigray: woreda-level maps for six hazards, enabling the RAATWG to visually distinguish high-risk woredas (red) from moderate (amber) and lower-risk (green) areas. The composite map revealed hotspot woredas that face overlapping and often simultaneous risks.

The maps were used to directly inform geographic targeting for pre-positioning items and the design of relevant actions within the regional EAPs. Looking ahead, they will serve as both a robust interim solution and a validation layer in the evidence base for anticipatory action in Ethiopia.

Lessons for other projects

Several factors contributed to the success of this process.

• Speed and cost efficiency. Each mapping exercise was completed in four to five hours. This is considerably shorter than the months typically required for conventional vulnerability assessments. It also means the approach is replicable without dedicated project funding.
• Breadth of expertise. The multisectoral panels drew on institutional memories spanning multiple disaster cycles. No single agency’s perspective dominated; instead, the collective knowledge of the region was systematically captured and triangulated.
• Tackling conflict as a hazard. Conflict is uniquely resistant to data-driven mapping. It moves fast, is politically sensitive and poorly captured by remote sensing or administrative records. The expert consensus approach cut through these barriers, resulting in conflict maps that were acknowledged as indicative rather than definitive; this gave the RAATWGs a workable spatial foundation that would otherwise not have existed.
• Legitimacy through ownership. Because the maps were produced by regional experts rather than commissioned from outside, they carried institutional credibility from day one. The same people who scored the risks would later use the maps to activate early actions, enabling continuity in their ownership.

For practitioners working in data-scarce contexts, this approach offers a practical, dignified and replicable path forward. This experience, conducted across three distinct regions, also provides lessons relevant across eastern Africa and beyond:

• Expert consensus is not a fallback, but a legitimate methodology. When used with structured facilitation and representative participation, it can generate fit-for-purpose risk maps quickly and at low cost.
• Composite maps reveal what individual hazard maps hide. Overlapping risks are often invisible when hazards are assessed in isolation; the cumulative picture is essential for prioritizing actions.
• The maps are living products. Because the exercise can be repeated in a matter of hours, maps can be updated following significant events or EAP activations, representing a major advantage over conventional mapping approaches.
• Data scarcity is not a barrier to starting. Through approaches such as this, the infrastructure needed for anticipatory action can be built in environments where risk-information systems remain underdeveloped.