Description

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.

Global Practice for Urban, Resilience and Land

The World Bank’s Urban, Resilience, and Land Global Practice (GPURL) works with cities and governments throughout the world to help them tackle the challenges of disaster risks and climate change. We do this through comprehensive investments in infrastructure, social programs, and the support to policy and regulatory reforms to plan cities better and leverage their financing capacity. Ultimately, these efforts aim to contribute to the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity by improving the living standards of the poorer segments of the population, oftentimes the most affected by uncontrolled urbanization.

GPURL covers a wide array of issues including:

(i) supporting the development of green, inclusive, resilient and productive cities, including harnessing urbanization to contribute to growth and poverty reduction, and strengthening local governments’ capacity to plan, finance and deliver services and infrastructure investments;
(ii) promoting efficient, well-coordinated spatial and territorial development processes including strengthening rural-urban linkages and developing lagging regions;
(iii) strengthening disaster risk management policies, institutions and regulations and mainstreaming resilience across development sectors including risk assessment and mapping, risk reduction (including urban flood management, stormwater drainage, coastal management, and retrofitting of infrastructure), disaster preparedness (including hydromet services, early warning systems, and civil defense), risk financing (including CAT-DDO), and resilient reconstruction and recovery (including post-disaster damage and needs assessment);
(iv) post-conflict reconstruction and recovery;
(v) strengthening land tenure, management and information systems; and
(vi) supporting the development of national and sub-national spatial data infrastructure and supporting the development of geospatial information.

Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), established in 2006, is a multi-donor partnership and grant-making financing mechanism. The Facility contributes to the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction by supporting on-the-ground technical assistance to help developing countries integrate Disaster Risk Management and climate change adaptation into development strategies, policies and investment programs, including post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. The GFDRR Secretariat is hosted within GPURL at the World Bank in Washington D.C. with satellite offices in Brussels and Tokyo. The Secretariat is responsible for resource mobilization, awarding and managing grants, reporting on results, and carrying out outreach and partnership development. It also acts as the support hub for a decentralized network of Disaster Risk Management experts within the World Bank and supports a number of global platforms for knowledge-sharing and capacity building.

GFDRR implements most of its activities through the World Bank, in partnership with national, regional, and other international agencies. The GFDRR program is currently organized around eight areas of engagement with specific program targets.  These are: Science and Technology, Inclusive Community Resilience, Urban Resilience, Resilient Infrastructure, Hydromet and Early Warning Systems, Financial Protection and Insurance, Resilience to Climate Change, and Resilient Recovery. The Facility maintains expert teams within each area of engagement that provide grant recipients with specialized knowledge and quality assurance in the design and implementation of activities. Along with these teams, GFDRR maintains communities of practice that help connect a broad array of partners, facilitate global engagements and capacity building, and produce innovative knowledge.

GFDRR’s operating model is underpinned by seven principles: (i) a demand driven approach to ensure maximum impact; (ii) leveraging development investments and policies; (iii) focusing on inclusive design and participation; (iv) empowering women and mainstreaming gender; (v) jointly addressing disaster and climate risk; (vi) developing knowledge and sharing best practices; and (vii) prioritizing results-oriented approaches.

City Resilience Program

Housed within GFDRR is the City Resilience Program (CRP), established in 2017. The CRP is an effort to assist city governments to build greater resilience to climate and disaster risks. For many major cities in the world, strengthening urban resilience is a multibillion-dollar agenda that requires strong partnerships and new sources of capital. Cities are sometimes held back from pursuing the necessary investments because they lack the technical expertise and/or the access to capital to finance them. CRP tries to fill that gap by i) leveraging the WBG’s broad set of sectoral expertise in designing urban resilience projects, and ii) better connecting cities to the necessary financing.  The aim of CRP is to catalyze a transparent pipeline of well-prepared investment opportunities for concessional and in some cases in part private financing and to link the project owners with such financing opportunities.

Role and Responsibilities

The E T Consultant’s primary objective is to support the Planning pillar within the CRP and enhance its assistance to cities in increasing their access to tools and technical support for effective planning for resilience. The E T Consultant helps the CRP integrate urban resilience into the technical assistance and operations of World Bank Task Teams. The E T Consultant will work closely with the Task Team Leader for CRP Planning, under managerial supervision of the Practice Manager, GFDRR.

Specific responsibilities and duties will include (but not be limited to) the following:

• Assist with the creation of CRP’s City Scan product, including coordinating inputs from consultants, organizing data, overseeing product cohesion and quality, and customizing the product as needed, and maintain relationships with Task Teams.
• Transform the City Scan workflow by automating, centralizing, and streamlining analytical processes; direct the adoption of technologies to reduce the effort needed for individual City Scan and related analytical products, and increase production efficiency.
• Drive the development of new analytical products to incorporate into the City Scan.
• Help identify and address Task Team demand for additional urban resilience-related analytical outputs, such as water & sanitation and network accessibility, and lead the development and standardization of various City Scan add-on modules.
• Support the creation and continuous development of the Urban Climate Risk Analysis (UCRA), in support of Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) or other country-level deliverables; critically evaluate and improve the components of the UCRA to ensure scientific integrity and maximize its contribution to urban resilience and climate risk assessment, drawing on the resources and expertise of GFDRR and other Bank Units.
• Help develop CRP’s technical capacity in machine learning and geospatial analysis on urban resilience and climate risks, in order to extract deeper and more nuanced insights from the interaction of various geospatial and other data that can be applied in a scalable way to Task Team needs.
• Incorporate and elevate disaggregated data on gender, socioeconomics, informal settlements, etc., that pertain to urban resilience; ensure a focus on marginalized populations in CRP analytics to inform resilience best practices.
• Provide other urban resilience- or climate change-focused geospatial and analytical support to Task Teams for operational inputs.
• Assist with building CRP’s institutional knowledge on resilience and climate data, analytical tools, geographical and climate models, and policy expertise on urban resilience and climate risks; synthesize and disseminate the knowledge to World Bank teams and other stakeholders.
• Help prepare CRP technical and Resilience Planning Workshops, including scoping of Workshop needs, instructional design, development of technical tools, and organization.
• Help deliver CRP Resilience Planning Workshops and presentations in a variety of event formats, including client meetings, donor events, and external conferences.
• Illustrate CRP advancements and contributions in the form of blogs, papers, etc.
• Contribute to CRP programmatic outputs including results monitoring, reporting, budgeting, and branding.
• Contribute to the overall collaboration and coordination of the Planning pillar with CRP’s Finance and Partnerships pillars.

Selection Criteria

• Advanced university degree(s) (at least Master’s) in a field relevant to urban development, infrastructure, and service delivery, such as urban planning, political science, public administration, engineering, or a related field, with an excellent understanding of cities and government operations.
• Technical proficiency in programming (e.g., Python, R) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), particularly related to climate change and urban resilience.
• Knowledge of remote sensing tools and products, particularly related to climate change and urban resilience.
• A minimum of 2 years of full-time work experience including project management and implementation.
• Working knowledge of World Bank operations, especially urban resilience and climate change mitigation and adaptation projects.
• Background in urban planning, urban climate and disaster resilience, post-disaster reconstruction, urban poverty reduction, or other related fields.
• Experience interfacing with and delivering high quality presentations and interactive workshops to government counterparts in developing countries and to donors.
• Proven capacity to multi-task, deliver results, and respond quickly and effectively to requests; ability to work under pressure.
• Strong oral, written, and visual presentation skills.
• Strong creativity and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and spoken English essential; knowledge in a second language is a plus (French and Spanish preferred).
• Ability to deal sensitively in a multicultural environment and build effective work relations with clients and colleagues as part of strong interpersonal, organizational, and team management skills to achieve results.

Competencies

• Ability to deliver in a dynamic environment with multiple demands and quick turnaround of outputs. Ability to work under pressure while retaining perspective and professionalism.
• Results oriented, with an ability to work independently as well as devise and produce results in collaboration with departments across the WBG.
• High degree of motivation, initiative, flexibility, reliability, and responsiveness to changing demands; capacity for effective multi-tasking, with demonstrated ability of being an independent starter with minimal supervision, and a high capacity to persevere for results.
• Highly developed communication and advocacy skills, including ability to write concisely and clearly in English and synthesize complex documentation and ideas into fluent, understandable, English.
• Strong interpersonal, organizational and team management skills, with demonstrated ability to build strong networks and teams to achieve results. Strong team skills with successful history working effectively across organizational and units and/or sectoral boundaries.
• Knowledge of social media and other knowledge communications tools is an advantage.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

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