Individual contractor for website and data work related to CRISP project

Result of Service

Under the direct supervision of the project manager and the overall guidance of the Chief of the Sustainable Socioeconomic Transformation Section, the consultant will develop creative and user-friendly visualizations of dashboard content for the macro model/microsimulation, LNOB analysis and country profiles, which will enable policymakers to more easily interact with, interpret and understand the information. These dashboards will be integrated into the online CRISP knowledge hub under the SPOT platform as follows: a) Simulations dashboard consisting of a) macro model for climate change scenario building and results and b)microsimulation model on impact of social protection; b) LNOB and climate resilience theme showcasing summary highlights of LNOB and climate resilience across four dimensions, drawing from LNOB website. c) Country profile theme showcasing key headlines and data to reinforce messages from country studies. This assignment will propose the design of this page and how data can be visualized through graphs, maps or infographics. This assignment will propose and prepare the creative and user-friendly design and data visualizations for these three tabs on the CRISP knowledge hub, including through integrating hazard data from the IDD risk and residence portal. In addition, the consultant will draft VNR Briefing Notes for selected 2027 VNR Countries following the standard template produced by ESCAP and develop a prototype interactive regional map to be featured on the ESCAP LNOB Platform to feature the analytical and capacity-building work and experience of ESCAP across Asia and the Pacific.

Work Location

Bangkok

Expected duration

01/08/26-31/03/27

Duties and Responsibilities

There is emerging acknowledgement of the role of social protection to strengthen climate resilience in climate change and Agenda 2030 related intergovernmental processes, highlighted in ESCAP Resolution 82/1, Baku-Bangkok Declaration on Promoting Social Development for Advancing Societies for All Ages in Asia and the Pacific (2026), Doha Political Declaration on the World Summit for Social Development (2025), COP outcome documents, including the Belem Declaration (2025) and Baku Declaration (2024) as well as other global outcome documents such as the Pact of the Future (2024). Nevertheless, despite the recognition on the need to integrate social protection and climate change sectors, there remain key capacity gaps in terms of policy integration, sectoral coordination mechanisms, lack of data, lack of analysis and understanding of key affected populations and climate financing mechanisms, and normative consensus. To strengthen the interlinkages between social protection and climate change, further efforts are required to harness policy integration, cross-sectoral coordination mechanisms, data as well as address key affected populations and increase knowledge and awareness on the urgency to integrate social protection and climate change policy tools.

Under the Climate-Resilient and Inclusive Social Protection (CRISP) initiative, ESCAP supports member States in integrating climate risk considerations into social protection systems, with particular attention to vulnerability, shock-responsiveness, and the needs of groups left furthest behind. Through CRISP, ESCAP aims to bridge climate, social, and economic policy domains and to support countries in translating analytical insights into practical system-level and programme-level reforms.

ESCAP is conducting a project to pioneer action in this emerging area for the Asia-Pacific region. It will build capacity of five beneficiary countries (Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand) that have engaged, or will engage, with ESCAP in the implementation of the Action Plan. It will engage five additional countries (China, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam) to share findings and build knowledge as part of ESCAP’s capacity development efforts through the Action Plan. It adopts a three-pronged approach to:

1. Increase capacity to recognize social protection measures that mitigate climate risks and strengthen resilience for groups in vulnerable situations;
2. Develop national capacities to quantify the impact of climate change on people and identify furthest behind groups;
3. Enhance regional cooperation for better social protection strategies to mitigate climate impacts and increase resilience of groups left furthest behind.

ESCAP’s Climate Resilient and Inclusive Social Protection initiative is developing an online knowledge hub to share its knowledge products and build capacity and awareness of the synergies between social protection and climate change. This assignment will relate to creative and user-friendly data visualization and dashboard content for CRISP for the following dashboard themes:

• macroeconomic and micro simulation analysis,
• LNOB analysis
• Country profile pages

The proposed work will help make CRISP results easier for policymakers to understand and use. Where relevant, data visualisations will be developed that shows the climate-risk context needed to interpret CRISP results clearly. This will allow users to understand how climate shocks may affect economies, sectors and households, and how social protection measures can reduce adverse welfare impacts. Coordination will be maintained with the project leads, macroeconomic modelling expert, IDD and TBD to ensure incorporation of feedback across all relevant steps.

Content will be created for 5 countries (Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand). The IC will create templates and populate these templates for Indonesia as a blueprint for other countries. The template will be shared with partner countries at a regional CRISP dialogue on 9-10 November 2026, after which they will be finalized. Content will also be created for Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Fiji and Thailand.

The proposed assignment will focus on:

• Developing templates for the 3 creative and user-friendly dashboard webpages themes that include visualization and dashboard content for CRISP, the dashboard themes include country profile page, SPOT dashboard and LNOB 4 CRISP.
• Populating and developing the 3 creative and user-friendly dashboard webpages themes for Indonesia, including data and content.
• Country climate/disaster risk profiling with the integration of relevant Risk and Resilience Portal data. This applies to LNOB data and country profile pages, where spatial evidence on climate hazards and socioeconomic exposure will be overlaid or linked, where possible.

The proposed role does not include development of the CRISP macroeconomic model, execution of the household microsimulation as these components will remain under the responsibility of the respective technical leads. The contribution will focus on translating model outputs and physical risk information into a coherent, visual and user-friendly tool.

ESCAP has also pioneered innovative data tools that help policymakers analyze inequality of opportunity and identify furthest behind groups in a range of basic opportunities, such as nutrition, education, healthcare and access to basic services, including basic drinking water, sanitation and clean energy, among others. This work builds on ESCAP’s experience in applying the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis and the Dissimilarity Index on nationally representative survey data, namely Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). Since 2019, SETS has generated a wealth of information on inequality of opportunity at national and subnational levels which led to the development of the ESCAP Leaving No One Behind (LNOB) Platform and its official online publication in 2023.

ESCAP keeps maintaining and expanding this platform which currently features results from 34 countries in Asia and the Pacific and over 19 SDG indicators. These empirical results have been incorporated in Voluntary National Review (VNR) reports of 20 countries in 2020-2026 period. VNRs help countries take stock of their progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. Building on this momentum, ESCAP has recently received technical assistance requests from member States to analyze new and country-specific survey data and incorporate LNOB results in the 2027 VNR cycle.

In this context, ESCAP requires support of is hiring a consultant to draft briefing notes targeting 2027 VNR countries in Asia and the Pacific including Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Fiji, Lao PDR, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan and Vanuatu. The consultant shall draft succinct knowledge products based on results generated by ESCAP and following the standard template for ESCAP LNOB VNR Briefing Notes. Where possible, the Briefing Notes shall include empirical evidence generated by ESCAP Social Protection Workstream, especially the CRISP initiative. Furthermore, the consultant shall develop a prototype regional map for the landing page of the ESCAP LNOB Platform to feature the work of ESCAP LNOB Workstream both in terms of analytical and capacity-building work experience.

Qualifications/special skills

Undergraduate degree in social sciences, economics data sciences or other related field. At least 2 years experience in the area of social protection, disaster risk reduction or climate change is required. Experience with international organisations is desirable.

Languages

Fluency in written and spoken English is required.

Additional Information

Not available.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.