Nepal Early Warning Systems - Project Coordinator

Nepal Early Warning Systems Project Coordinator 

Contractor: 60% FTE, July 15, 2024 - December 15, 2025  

Salary: $15,300 ($900 per month) 

Location: Kathmandu, Nepal

About Stimson

The Henry L. Stimson Center (Stimson), a nonpartisan global security think tank located in Washington, DC, seeks a Nepal Early Warning Systems Project Coordinator. Reporting to Project Lead Austin Lord (Stimson Center Energy, Water, and Sustainability Program Senior Fellow), this role ensures that our practices support our mission-driven work, align with Stimson’s vision, values, strategic goals, standards of conduct, and operational objectives, and demonstrate our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and employee well-being.  

We seek a highly motivated, organized, entrepreneurial, and collaborative individual committed to Stimson’s mission and core values. This person understands that any organization is only as good as the people working there and the relationships they build and sustain. This job will require building authentic relationships with staff and affiliates that facilitate the successful candidate’s ability to challenge, develop, and support them.   

About the Program and Position Summary

Nepal is one of the most disaster-prone countries in South Asia and is highly exposed to both extreme weather events and an evolving array of climate change-related hazards. In the Himalayas, precarious geomorphology and volatile meteorological conditions can combine to produce complex, cascading disasters which cause intense patterns of loss and damage. New analyses are needed to understand the shifting dimensions of risk to downstream communities and the ways in which critical infrastructures may be exposed and disrupted. As hazard regimes shift, new tools, modes of coordination, and interdisciplinary collaborations are needed to formulate scalable and sustainable EWS approaches.

Stimson’s Nepal Early Warning Systems project works with government and non-government partners to develop systems that can generate an effective prior warning and empower individuals at both the state and community levels to make the most informed and appropriate decisions in response to latent and emergent disaster risks such as debris flows. We aim to develop new systems that can augment and elaborate on existing systems while linking efforts across diverse sites and scales.  

Our goal is to employ our research and toolkit to raise awareness, enable greater knowledge-sharing, and develop a concrete channel for risk assessment and implementation of effective disaster risk resilience mechanisms with EWS at the heart of the process. This contracted position for Project Coordinator will support Phase Two of this project, which will be carried out over an 18-month period (June 2024 to December 2025) - but extension of the initial contract beyond December 15, 2025 will be dependent on a performance review.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct field-based outreach and research in the project’s areas of interest for data collection; validation of models; coordinating  
• Support engagement efforts and facilitate workshops, feedback sessions, and technical trainings with project partners, government of Nepal counterparts, and community disaster management committees (CMDCs) in project areas of interest focused on disaster risk analysis and anticipatory action 
• Contribute to the continued development of the project methodology for evaluating potential risk of cascading hazards and analyzing patterns of vulnerability at the watershed level 
• Support data collection for the development of exposure and vulnerability datasets within the Stimson project’s areas of interest 
• Monitoring media and news for reports of disasters and/or emergent hazards and risks relevant to our program 
• Assist with on-demand analysis of any extreme events, disaster, or elevated risk situations identified by project partners and Government of Nepal institutions  
• Participating in weekly coordination meetings with the Stimson Team, as well as ad hoc consultations with scientific advisors and key stakeholders (e.g. NDRRMA or DHM) 
• Represent Stimson at national and subnational events when other Stimson team members are not available in Nepal 
• Composing biweekly progress reports on project activities  
• Contribute to workshops and knowledge sharing sessions as needed 
• Support for analysis of project findings as well as the drafting of periodic performance reports and final project reports 
• Support contract management

Qualifications – required:  

• 5+ years applied work experience in disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, anticipatory action, or climate risk management in Nepal 
• PhD or Masters required in a field within the social sciences, or a PhD or Masters in the physical sciences and significant experience working on the social aspects of disaster or climate risk management 
• Experience with community engagement and citizen science approaches, broadly construed 
• Practical experience working on EWS and anticipatory action projects, familiarity with the current institutional landscape  
• Working understanding of mountain geohazard processes, hazard zoning, and patterns of exposure 
• Working experience conducting research on localized experiences of risk and vulnerability and/or collecting data 
• Ability to manage quantitative and qualitative hazard data from a variety of different sources 
• Understanding of the factors that shape disaster exposure and climate vulnerability in the Nepal context 
• Experience facilitating field workshops and conducting field-based work to generate hazard and exposure data and validate models 
• Familiarity with the BIPAD portal and challenges related to disaster data management 
• Ability to communicate and present findings to non-technical audiences (in Nepali and English) 
• Nepali language fluency

Qualifications – preferred:

• Experience with principles of knowledge co-production 
• Experience working with and/or coordinating with local/municipal government authorities on DRR, EWS, or AA 
• Past experience working in coordination with the Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Authority (NDRRMA) of Nepal or the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology.

We welcome applications from candidates who may not meet all preferred qualifications. 

Application requirements: 

Qualified candidates should submit a cover letter and resume via email at stimsonnepaljobs@gmail.com no later than 7th July 2024.

Stimson is an equal-opportunity employer that celebrates, supports, and promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion. We will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation or gender identity, or any other legally protected basis, in accordance with applicable laws.

Company Description

The Henry L. Stimson Center (Stimson), is a nonpartisan global think tank located in Washington, DC which promotes international security and shared prosperity through applied research and independent analysis, global engagement, and policy innovation. For three decades, Stimson has been a leading voice on urgent global issues: engaging new voices, generating innovative ideas and analysis, and building solutions to promote international security, prosperity, and justice.

For more information about this specific project and Stimson’s Energy, Water, and Sustainability Program see here: https://www.stimson.org/project/early-warning-systems-for-cascading-disasters-in-nepal/.