How to use the EWEA System
Executive Summary: This document explains in simple terms how to make the best use of UNICEF’s on-line EWEA System. Guidance is provided with examples and screen shots to enable the user at CO, RO or HQ level to contribute to improved emergency preparedness. It should be noted that the requirement to create and update what used to be called an “EPRP” will now be satisfied by using the on-line EWEA System. Thus, the update of the assessment of emergency risks, the update of the key actions for emergency response readiness with associated documents, and the update of planned preparedness activities integrated into Country Office Annual/Rolling Work Plans, by itself constitutes the equivalent of an updated online EPRP.
Link with planning cycle
This revised version of the EWEA system is meant to support good Emergency Risk Informed Programming. Country Offices will therefore need to work on the system at least twice a year:
First, at the beginning of the year when undertaking annual reviews and formulating annual/rolling work-plans :
-Review emergency risks in the country and reflect this analysis in the Early-Warning section/tab of EWEA
-Review status of country office emergency response readiness in the key actions section/tab of the system. Status of key actions needs to be regularly updated as the CO improves its emergency readiness. After a period of 2 years key actions which have never been updated will no longer be valid. For countries with a low exposure to emergency risks the first key actions are the most important and constitute a minimum level of readiness, for countries with a medium/high exposure to emergency risks all 20 key actions must be updated regularly.
-Based on the evolution of emergency risks, on the status of emergency response readiness as documented in the key actions and building on lessons learned from either emergency responses having occurred in the previous year or emergency simulations, CO should plan and integrate emergency preparedness activities in annual/rolling workplans and management plans. Preparedness activities should cover overall office management (simulation, contingency planning, office wide EPR training), programme and operations areas. The main preparedness activities planned and included in annual/rolling workplans need to be recorded in the preparedness section/tab of EWEA.
Second, at the mid-year review:
-Update the risk analysis (early-warning)
-Review the progress done in the workplan for priority preparedness activities (preparedness)
-Review the status of readiness and complete those key actions that might not be up to date (key actions)
Regional Offices need to work on the system also to provide the necessary support to COs:
-Early-warning section/tab: when an assessment is done by a CO, regional office has accountability to provide analytical support to COs by commenting on the assessment. Furthermore, when an alert is sent by the system, the regional emergency team has an accountability to work on this alert and provide all the necessary support to the CO
-Preparedness section/tab: when COs highlight that they require support in some preparedness activities, ROs are on the frontline to provide this support. Therefore the regional emergency team shall review at least twice a year the status of preparedness activities in COs to provide the support required as well as provide general oversight of preparedness activities included in annual workplans. Support can also be sought from HQ if needed
-Key Actions section/tab: ROs have an accountability to check for the quality of the key actions uploaded by COs and to provide hands-in support to improve the quality where required.
EMOPS has a responsibility to
-Manage the global system and provide technical support and advice where necessary
-Provide comments and analytical support on the early-warning assessments that show significant change
-Monitor and report in collaboration ROs on the overall use of the EWEA system throughout the organization with a particular focus on the CO level of emergency response readiness as documented by the key actions status which will feed into UNICEF’s global performance management system into CO’s manager dashboards.
-Review annually theclassification of emergency risk exposure used to calculate the level of emergency response readiness.
Access rights
Any UNICEF staff with a valid UNICEF email has access to the system.
Only the Early-Warning section/tab is access restricted because of potentially sensitive information.
At country level:
There are 2 levels of access:
-Reader = the staff can read the page but cannot change it
-Editor = the staff can edit the country early-warning analysis.
The country Representative or Deputy Representative needs to approve the changes in the list of persons with access to this web page. Then the local country IT team can implement the changes into the database.
At regional level:
There are 2 levels of access:
-Reader = the staff receives the EW alerts from the COs but doesn’t receive the EW requests for comments
-Adviser = the staff receives the EW alerts and the EW requests for comments
At global level:
There are 3 levels of access:
-HQ mail= the staff receives the EW alerts
-HQ taskforce= the staff receives the EW alerts and requests for comments
-Administrator= the staff has full access to all pages of the system, can do edits, and can change parameters.
Early-Warning
At beginning of the year (EMOPS will send a reminder around end January), all COs are requested to review emergency risks in the country so as to plan relevant preparedness activities in annual/rolling work plans and annual management plans. Similarly to the former EPRP, the process (1) assessing/updating emergency risks, (2) reviewing lessons learned from previous emergencies/simulations and level of emergency response readiness and (3) planning ensuing emergency preparedness activities to be included into annual/workplans, needs be consultative and participatory so that staff members can really contribute to make the UNICEF regular programme emergency risk informed.
When this analysis is done, the most important risks shall be reflected in the EWEA system which categorises emergency risks based:
-On a timeline: immediate (next 6 months), medium term (7-12 months), sudden-onset
-On a mobilisation level: level 1 means that CO expects to manage the emergency response on its own or that capacities of Government are sufficient to manage the emergency. Level 2 means that CO’s capacity will be stretched significantly and that support will be required from RO and/or HQ. Level 3 is an organisation-wide emergency (Indian Ocean Tsunami, 2004, Pakistan 2010).
-On the order of magnitude: based on the number of children and women affected.
For uploading the analysis onto the system, the staff member must have access rights as an editor (cf earlier), for doing so,
1-he / she must press on “assess”
2-Then edit / add the relevant threats and do the analysis (short, concise summaries of no more than 8 lines, please)
3-Highlight if the situation has changed on not since the last assessment
4-Press submit button
An email is then automatically generated and sent to the RO taskforce for all submissions and to HQ taskforce if there have been significant changes. RO/HQ staffs have 48 hours to provide comments. The assessment is then made official and appears in the system.
Key Actions
This page is a list of key emergency response readiness elements that countries need to undertake to be considered as prepared to respond to emergencies. This can be considered as a checklist for CO emergency response readiness. All templates for these key actions are available on this page by clicking on the icon in the “template” column.
IMPORTANT: responsibilities for updating and documenting the key actions needs to be shared in the office among accountable management, programme and operations staff members. This must not be the sole responsibility of the emergency specialists/focal points! Recommended accountabilities for updating the system are mentioned in the instructions at the top of all key action templates and should be documented in the annual management plan.
To update the status of a key action, the accountablestaff member must press “edit”for this key action and a menu will appear: the staff member can upload the filled-in template to document the key action and check if the update is complete or still partial.
Relevant RO staff members should review the quality of the key action as part of their oversight function, following the same process, and check if the key action has been quality-checked and insert comments if required. The EWEA system will then automatically send the comments to the staff who had updated the Key Action.
The minimum level of readiness of COs will vary based on the different levels of emergency risk exposure.Using OCHA’s Global Focus Model, EMOPS has developed a classification on emergency risk exposure which is reviewed by Regional Offices before being finalized ( This classification will be reviewed annually. Based on this classification:
-The minimum level of readiness for low exposure countries consists in completion of key actions 1 – 10
-The minimum level of readiness for medium/high exposure countries consists in completion of all 20.
Furthermore,each key action is given a weight that differs between countries with a low emergency risk exposure and those with medium/highexposure Full score for a key action will be given if CO assessed the key action as complete, and half score if partially done. Thetotal score is then computed automatically on a maximum of 100 by adding all key action scores achieved by a country. Countries scoring below 50/100 will be assessed as red (low emergency response readiness). Countries scoring between 50/100 and 70/100 will be assessed as orange (medium readiness). And countries above 70/100 will be assessed as green (high readiness).
This score will be exported to the performance management dashboard and will represent the country’slevel of emergency response readiness in communications to senior management.
At any given time a CO can generate a PreparednessStatus Reportwhich summarizes all informationincluded in the system. The readiness score of the country will be given at the top of the report.
Regional offices and headquarters staff can get an overview on the level of readiness for one country, one region or globally. This can be done by going to global – key actions and choosing the area of interest. This can be copied into an excel worksheet and shared if needed.
Preparedness
Based on the updated assessment of emergency risks and status of readiness, CO need to plan appropriate preparedness activities, discuss with partners and integrate them in their annual/rolling workplans. Preparedness activities include those for management which are office wide (simulations, EPR trainings, Inter Agency Contingency Planning) and those for specific programme and operations sectors. While the main objective is to integrate these preparedness activities in annual/rolling workplans and management plans, CO are also required to record the priority activities in the preparedness tab/section of the EWEA system. This part of the system is divided on the basis of programme and operational sectors aligned with the CCCs, plus a management section for office wide cross-sectoral activities.
Similarly to the Key Actions, responsibilities for inputting and updating preparedness activities in the system needs to be shared among the accountable staff members and documented in the CO Annual Management Plan.
To update information COs need to press the “edit” button in the appropriate section (e.g Programme – Nutrition) to be able to edit the page.
A new screen will appear and COs need to input where relevant a description of activities with a timeframe, a budget for the cost of the activity, and specific support needed, and then press “save”.
At mid-year review, the staff who updated the page shall go back to it and upload the progress made since the initial uploading was done.
CO management, regional offices and headquarters can at any moment in time look at all preparedness activities planned in AWPs throughout the region / the globe, and provide targeted support. This can be done by generating a custom report (next section).
Reports generation
The EWEA system is a monitoring tool to assess CO’s emergency risk assessment, emergency response readiness and preparedness planned in annual workplans. To facilitate this monitoring a custom report function was embedded in the system to generate specific reports for either aspecific threat, a specific key action or a specific preparedness sector.
Preparedness Status Report (equivalent of a summary on line EPRP)
Anywhere on the country pages, a CO can generate a Preparedness Status Report which is a summary of the online EPRP.
This report is a summary of all CO information recorded in the system for a specific country. Only the content of the key actions needs to be downloaded and printed separately. It is suggested that after each update of the EWEA at the beginning of the year after finalization of the workplan and after the mid-year review update, a preparedness status report including all attached key actions be printed and distributed to the members of the CO emergency management team in order for it to be readily available in case of emergencies.
Custom reporting
On the left hand side of the screen any staff can generate reports based on the information in the system. The system allows one to choose any region/country and any reporting criteria which may be of use to the staff.
For instance a regional child protection adviser can generate a report for all countries in the region on all preparedness activities planned in child protection and on the readiness status on the child protection key action for these countries.
Or, for a low-income country often prone to floods and tropical cyclones, it is possible to generate a report on all preparedness activities for all countries suffering the same risks. It is then possible to see what type of preparedness activities are being done in these countries to prepare efficiently to such emergencies.
Readiness status report
As seen earlier, in global – key actions, any staff can generate a scorecard with the levels of emergency response readiness of all countries in a region or globally.
Informationsupport
Finally, the system has a document generation and document repository function.
Maps:
When going to Maps / request a map (cf screenshot), the system allows any staff member to submit a rapid map request to UNOSAT. This map request can be for any map service that can realistically be obtained by satellite imagery and serves emergency response, emergency preparedness, disaster or conflict risk reduction, or recovery purposes (e.g., damages to buildings, active fires, displaced persons, troops positioning, flooded areas...). As per the UNICEF/UNOSAT agreement, after a screening of the request by OPSCEN, UNOSAT is obliged to provide this service to the requesting staff member.
The staff member will be requested to fill out a form that will be checked by OPSCEN and sent to UNOSAT. After 72hrs, UNOSAT will produce the map, send a link to the staff requesting, and it will begin appearing in the EWEA system in the country - maps section. Maps from other service providers are also posted on this page.
News services
Any news from several emergency news portals can be accessed directly for a given region or country by pressing to the latest emergency news button on this country or region’s page.
Key guidance and contacts
By pressing “emergency guidance” on the left hand side menu, COsor ROs can seek key guidance and technical support contacts for preparing to emergencies.
Document repository
Finally, by clicking on CO/RO/HQ documents on the left-hand side menu, COs have the possibility of creating institutional memory by uploading those emergency-related documents that they feel are important. This also enables COs to search for other COs’ key documents online.
For additional information, please contact:
Michel Le PechouxGuillaume Simonian
Chief of EWP Section, EMOPSRisk Reduction Specialist
+41 22 909 5610+41 22 909 5644
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