GIS-Web Developer Consultancy – Vacancy

Organization: IGAD Climate Predictions and Applications Centre - ICPAC

Programme: Disaster Risk Management

Duration: 9 months

Location: ICPAC HQ

Start date: ASAP

IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) is the Regional Climate Centre for Eastern Africa providing climate services to 11 countries. ICPAC is a specialized institution of IGAD with the mission of fostering climate services and knowledge to enhance community resilience for prosperity in the region.

The Disaster Risk Management (DRM) programme at ICPAC intends to award a service contract for individual consultancy of a full-stack geo-developer to join the agile team within the Disaster Operations Centre (DOC). The Disaster Operations Centre is a newly set-up state-of-the-art space tasked with routinely monitoring multiple disasters across the region to provide comprehensive and integrated early warning information that supports relevant actors anticipate and deliver early action thereby averting or mitigating the impacts of disasters on the lives and livelihoods of the people in the region.

The consultant will work closely with thematic experts, climate scientists and the communication team at ICPAC as well as the users in the region to develop custom features and visualization techniques to support policy makers and other stakeholders make informed decisions.

The scope of this consultancy is:

1) Develop new system features and optimize existing features of the Drought Watch system. The East Africa Drought Watch is a public online system that routinely monitors drought conditions over the region.

2) Develop a regional disaster risk and impacts visualization dashboard. The DOC disaster dashboard is a system expected to collate disaster information (risks and impacts) from multiple sources and present visualizations and analytics that provide quick and effective overview of the disaster situation in the region

3) Support development and integration of impact-based forecasting and automating thresholds and triggers for anticipatory action

Minimum Qualifications and Experience

Education:

● University degree in Computer Science, Geo-Informatics, Computer Engineering, IT or other relevant field,

● Minimum of two (2) years of relevant experience in geo-applications design and development.

Technical qualifications:

● Experience working with scripting languages (e.g. Python) to automate geo-processing/large data workflows

● Demonstrate knowledge of web technologies, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript

● Experience with application containerization (Docker) and deployment on cloud infrastructure

● Experience working on a variety of software development projects and developing front-end web solutions

● Proven experience (deployed projects, Github code) with designing and developing production ready scalable geospatial web applications with open-source industry standard technologies such as Node.js, React, Mapbox GL, Leaflet, Carto, python, Geoserver, Mapserver, GDAL,

● Sound knowledge of SQL and PostGIS spatial database;

● Experience developing REST API and a good understanding of microservices architecture

● Advanced knowledge of OGC geospatial standards like WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS, Simple Features for SQL

● Experience working with Go Language added advantage

● Experience manipulating and analyzing Earth Observation data in different data formats is desirable

● Candidates should demonstrate their qualifications and proficiency in web application development and geo-application development (provide links to at least 2 samples of previous work and/or Github code)

Deliverables and Remuneration

The remuneration for this contract is based on deliverables (as per the table below) over a staggered duration not exceeding 9 months.

Task

Sub-task

Deliverables

Payment Schedule

Task1: Develop new system features and optimize existing workflows/system features on Drought Watch

Implement functionality to support national level analysis

- User interface for national level analysis;

- Support analysis on user-defined boundaries and other non-administrative boundaries i.e. Protected Areas
- Among other things, the user should be able to identify which administrative areas are the most affected both via spatial distribution and time-series analysis

30%

Add relevant thematic layers to support national reporting; forecasting, vulnerability, adaptive capacity

- Additional layers available on the system - socio-economic and eco-climatic layers

30%

Feedback interface to support product validation

- enable user feedback collection for product validation

Develop new analysis products that provide drought evolution over a region, change analysis showing; areal evolution across different warning levels

- New analytics and visualization available

Enhance report functionality:
a)export reports to pdf/email; allow users to subscribe
b) Improve design and thematic layer visualization of the reports

- user subscription available; users select region, time-scale and products of interest
- improved report design and visualization

- semi-automate report generation allowing thematic experts to edit text in the pre-generated report

Task2: Develop disaster information dashboard

Collate disaster information from multiple sources and provides maps, statistics and info-graphics visualization on a dashboard

- database of disasters
- map visualization of current disaster
- impact statistics visualization

40%

Task3: Support development and integration of impact-based forecasting for anticipatory actions

Automate trigger and thresholds for anticipatory actions

- Triggers and threshold integrated into forecasts; this workflow automated

How to Apply

Interested candidates are encouraged to apply via email (Hard copies will not be accepted) with subject line ‘‘Application for GIS-Web Developer - DOC’’. Applications should be received by close of business on 8th April 2022. Include an expression of interest, curriculum vitae, stating relevant achievements and illustrating capacity to undertake the work to the following Address: recruitments@icpac.net cc procurement@icpac.net