Workstream 3:
Capacity Building & Knowledge Management

Develop capacities of all stakeholders to guarantee a broader understanding of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance, with comprehensible information easily disseminated through user-friendly knowledge-sharing platforms

RISK TALK: an Interactive Knowledge Sharing Tool on Climate Risk Management Solutions

Let’s talk about risk, through RISK TALK, an interactive knowledge-sharing tool on climate and disaster risk-management solutions.

RISK TALK is a user-friendly online tool aimed at connecting people with different experiences on the topic of climate and disaster risk management.

RISK TALK leverages both artificial intelligence powered by Starmind technology and the knowledge of experts to deliver specific and tailored answers at no cost to its registered users.

This tool is a creative and effective way to reach individuals interested in improving their knowledge of climate and disaster risk management while simultaneously creating an accessible archive of questions and answers that can further advance knowledge exchange.

Risk Talk Background

RISK TALK was developed in cooperation with the InsuResilience Global Partnership (‘the Partnership’), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (‘UNFCCC’) Secretariat and is hosted by Starmind Technology, a Switzerland-based company for cloud solutions driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

On behalf of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and its Executive Committee (‘Excom’), the UNFCCC Secretariat approached the Partnership to develop a clearing house as a repository for information, initially on climate risk transfer solutions. RISK TALK was launched in 2017 at the Conference of the Parties (‘COP23’) held in Bonn and has since widened its scope to include questions and answers on climate and disaster risk management.

The challenge

As countries grapple with the impacts of climate change, a knowledge gap exists that inhibits access to tailored climate and disaster risk-management solutions designed to facilitate early action, disaster relief and recovery by poor and vulnerable communities or their representatives. While available information on the Internet may provide general solutions, it does not offer specific answers to the needs and questions of individuals and stakeholders developing risk-management strategies. Addressing this knowledge gap will require climate risk-related issues to be discussed and assessed on a case-by-case basis.

The solution

RISK TALK is a lighthouse feature of the UNFCCC Fiji Clearing House for Risk Transfer and the solution to closing knowledge gaps with the aim of enabling a faster and better exchange on climate and disaster risk-management solutions. RISK TALK provides a database of existing answers to many specific climate and disaster risk-related questions as well as an active online exchange tool for people to ask questions quickly and effectively, receive timely answers, and share expertise relating to climate and disaster risk management.

The purpose of RISK TALK is to provide a user-friendly tool for users at various levels of expertise and knowledge so that they can learn, seek advice, and share their expertise on the broader topic of climate and disaster risk management. Users of the tool range from policymakers, government officials, employees of multilateral organizations, civil-society organizations and individuals from academia. They will have access to custom-made climate and disaster risk-management information or contribute their expertise to the matrix by developing an expert profile.

For more information on the Fiji Clearing House for Risk Transfer, see the website: http://unfccc-clearinghouse.org/

Current statistics (as of 31 December 2020)

How does RISK TALK work?

The technology behind RISK TALK is based on a self-learning algorithm that uses neuroscientific principles, i.e. artificial intelligence and a neural network system. This ensures that a question is forwarded to a user who is most likely to provide a tailored answer.

The use of artificial intelligence in the technology behind RISK TALK can be divided into two main areas:

  • The RISK TALK tool automatically extracts the most relevant topics from diverse types of document and questions and understands how these topics fit into a skill ontology by using techniques from the field of natural language processing.
  • The RISK TALK tool builds skills profiles by learning from various kinds of interactions of users with topics, and continuously updating this information in real-time as relevant new data comes in.

RISK TALK also uses a variety of methods from the field of ‘Natural Language Processing’ to identify the most important topics in questions, answers, and different types of document. In the application of the tool, these topics are represented by tags: single words or short phrases that describe a topic of expertise. These tags can come from general knowledge that is preloaded into the Risk Talk tool. RISK TALK can also recognize organization-specific tags, such as project name.

Additionally, RISK TALK can recognize organization-specific tags, such as project names.

RISK TALK & Natural Language Processing

The skill wheel shows the most common tags in the RISK TALK network and how strongly they are connected. These connections are based on whether the tags often co-occur with each other.

The expert search lets a user search the top experts for a given tag or a combination of tags. The results reflect the list of experts for this specific point in time, which means that the results will change in the future with every new interaction between an expert and the tags. When searching for experts relating to a combination of topics, RISK TALK takes the relationships between those topics into account so as to decide how to combine the expertise of users for particular topics. Users can add or remove tags to or from the search by clicking on the wheel or by entering a specific tag in the search bar. The skill wheel and the expert list are updated whenever the selection changes.

How to use RISK TALK

Users can register on RISK TALK by following a simple process that only requires a username and email address to sign up. This instantly makes the user part of the interactive and growing online community. Every user can anonymously ask questions and visibly respond based on their knowledge and perspective. The interaction from the present community provides a diverse set of expertise to topics highlighted within the tool. The dynamic element of RISK TALK is further enhanced through the option of rating the answers provided.

This also encourages and ensures high-quality information. A profile of the experts gradually emerges from these evaluations and the software can then approach them to provide answers.

The RISK TALK tool is available in different languages, including English, Spanish, German, Russian and French. It also contains a translation option.

Sign up to RISK TALK here

1
2
3
4
5