Location:

Washington DC, United States
Salary:

negotiable / YEAR
Job type:

FULL_TIME
Posted:

2 months ago
Category:

Social and Inclusive Development
Deadline:

09/08/2024

JOB DESCRIPTION

JOB SUMMARY:

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, please visit www.worldbank.org

Junior Professional Associates – Program Description

The Junior Professionals Associate Program (JPA) offers an exceptional opportunity for recent graduates to embark on a professional journey, providing a three-year contract with valuable work experience within a diverse and dynamic environment and the potential of field work experience. The program is an excellent platform to sharpen your existing skills and to develop new ones, all while gaining a profound understanding of the challenges associated with reducing poverty and fostering shared prosperity on a livable planet.

We will provide you with the opportunity to gain entry-level professional experience in a premier development institution, on an Extended Term Consultant (ETC) contract with benefits. For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org/careers/jpa

The following are minimum requirements to be eligible for the JPA program:

• Be 32 years of age or younger

• Hold a bachelor’s degree

• Be fluent in English

The JPA program at the World Bank is a highly competitive initiative. Candidates who are being actively considered for positions may be required to present academic transcripts and professional references. The World Bank’s Human Resources team and hiring team will reach out exclusively to individuals selected for assessment and interviews.

Positions may be in any of the World Bank’s offices worldwide.

Disaster and Climate Risk Management Global Unit

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.

Within GPURL, 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.

To support the facility’s strategic objectives and the Sendai Framework, GFDRR focuses on engagements across four priority areas and two cross-cutting themes as follows. These priority areas are supported by fourteen specialized global technical lines of work, providing expertise and technical assistance to our clients and operational task teams.

1.1 THE DIGITAL EARTH PARTNERSHIP

The Digital Earth Partnership for Resilience (DEP) is a Global Technical line of GFDRR that supports the scaling and standardization of geospatial data solutions for Disaster Risk Management (DRM). The Digital Earth Partnership aims to enhance the resilience of vulnerable countries and communities to climate change and natural hazard disasters through greater access to and adoption of frontier earth observation tools & services. This will be achieved by developing and transferring global knowledge, mobilizing key partnerships, and providing operational support to client-executed and Bank activities in the production and use of earth observation for resilience.

This program also hosts partnerships and collaborations with various space agencies including with the European Space Agency (ESA), German Aerospace Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASA. These partnerships facilitate access to new satellite based data services, with the potential to transform how data for disaster resilience are acquired, maintained and applied in low income settings. DEP focuses on building capacity in the implementation and utilization of new generation digital earth technologies, machine learning/ artificial intelligence (AI) and local data validation provides an opportunity to fill baseline exposure data gaps in low income countries. Improved capacity in this blended and locally sustainable approach has the potential to generate critical baseline data for disaster modeling, planning and decision making at a larger scale than previously done, and for a lower cost.

Managed by the Digital Earth Partnership, the Risk Data Library Standard (RDLS) is an open data standard to make it easier to work with disaster and climate risk data. It describes the data used and produced in risk assessments, including hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and modeled loss or impact data. The RDLS provides a unique way to create, store, exchange and use disaster different risk information together. It is at the core of the Risk Data Library, a suite of open-source tools to work with disaster and climate risk data. The RDLS has been adopted by World Bank for disaster and climate risk assessments but is intended to be used by anyone involved in generating or using disaster risk information. It is a collaborative project managed by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) of the World Bank Group, with funding from the Swiss Re Foundation.

The DEP also plays a mainstreaming role within GFDRR to support other global technical teams. In this regards the DEP promotes the adoption of common standards such as the RDLS, centralizes certain data licensing and procurement functions for exposure and hazard data services, facilitates access to most recent high value datasets for disaster risk, and coordination of available experts and partnership resources.

1.2 THE 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 fills 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.

CRP conducts a wide variety of spatial analytics centered in cities to help Bank teams and clients address city resilience planning needs. This includes the City Scan, a standard package of maps, charts, narrative data, and other visualizations and information that together provide an overview of a city’s key aspects, climate conditions, and natural hazards and risks, as well as other scalable “Scan”-type products with particular sectoral focus, city-focused country-level analytical tools, and a flexible range of customizable spatial analytical products. Much of these analyses are based on open and freely available global datasets, often but not exclusively serving as conversation starters for key preliminary insights and identification of further areas for analysis.

1.3 DISASTER RISK ANALYTICS

Accurate disaster risk analytics information is crucial to reducing the impacts of disasters and guiding climate adaptation investments. The Global Program for Disaster Risk Analytics (GPDRA) was designed to support client countries, World Bank teams and other key stakeholders in developing innovative tools, knowledge products and data information that can facilitate evidence-based decisions.

The analytical and advisory services provided by the GPDRA are organized around four pillars: 1) expansion of rapid post-disaster damage assessments, 2) hazard exposure modeling of the built environment, 3) quantification of disaster risk, and 4) economics of resilience. Key activities are described below.

1.4 NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS

The World Bank and GFDRR are scaling up the integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) to address climate challenges and help countries build resilience. NBS are effective and adaptive interventions to protect, manage, and/or restore natural or modified systems, including coastlines, cities, watersheds, and rivers. NBS can address multiple sustainable development goals, such as climate and disaster-risk resilience; economic and social prosperity; water security; and health and food security in a cost-effective manner. In many cases, NBS are implemented as hybrid interventions combining green and grey infrastructure in integrated interventions.

NBS has developed the NBS Opportunity Scan (NBSOS) – a set of maps and tools that leverages Earth observation data to identify investment opportunities in nature-based solutions for climate resilience around the globe. In about 6 weeks, NBSOS provides investment opportunities in nature-based solutions to reduce disaster risk and to build climate resilience. As the starting point for an investment plan, NBSOS results help the World Bank engage governments and stakeholders and to inform feasibility studies, design, and implementation.

1.5 DISASTER FRAGILITY VIOLENCE AND CONFLICT NEXUS

In a world grappling with multiple crises, addressing the complex challenges at the intersection of disasters in Fragile, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) settings is more crucial than ever. GFDRR responds to this urgency through its Disaster-FCV Nexus Thematic Area which provides operational and strategic guidance, informs development finance to enhance disaster resilience in FCV environments, and contributes to global knowledge through original analytics to deepen our understanding of the intersection.

One of the many challenges of operating in FCV contexts is the weakness of local statistics systems and institutions compounded by the difficulty for technical specialists to work on the ground. Use of remote sensing technologies and adoption of citizen data sources provide useful alternatives for assessing and mitigating disaster risk in FCV settings.

Duties and Responsibilities

This position will support the selected global technical lines of GFDRR with geospatial data analysis, coordination, and project management. Global teams include Digital Earth Partnership, the City Resilience Program, Nature Based Solutions, Risk Analytics (GPDRA) and the Fragility Conflict and Violence Nexus. The JPA is expected to become familiar with the suite of digital tools and data services supported by GFDRR and to support their application in the various analytical services of the DEP, GPDRA, CRP, NBS and FCV Nexus programs.

The associates’ duties and responsibilities shall include (but are not limited to):

• Support TTLs with project management activities and the development of Digital Public Goods product such as the Risk Data Library (RDL) and the underlying Risk Data Library Standard (RDLS), and Global Urban heat products, as well as contribution to other products such as the Nature Based Solutions Scans (NBS Scans).

• Contribute to new climate and disaster risk data analytics and visualizations, and endeavor to further the adoption of open-risk data more broadly within the bank though development of Data Science Notebooks.

• Contribute to the development of existing and/or new spatial analytical products that synthesize data inputs from a variety of sources and translate them into insights for particular locations.

• Contribute to the development of new modalities for delivering spatial analytical products and tools, as appropriate for different audiences and users, for example through interactive training instances.

• Contribute to the development and sharing of new (and existing) risk products and datasets within ongoing and new climate and disaster risk studies. Products such as: World Settlement Footprint (WSF), Fathom, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), and GEM.

• Identifying existing climate and disaster risk data and making them available as open data (particularly through the Risk Data Library).

• Organize training and outreach events on climate and risk data.

• Coordinate team members and resources to deliver high-quality work products that incorporate a wide range of skills and techniques.

• Assist with drafting necessary Terms of References for supplementary training and data collection activities, and guide/supervise successful consulting firms’ methodology and quality of work

• Develop high-quality slide decks, written reports, and knowledge dissemination products, showcasing methods, findings, and other project elements

• Contribute to blog posts, social media, press releases, podcasts, and other media

• Support the development and technical assembly of CRP City Scans and other scalable, sectoral and/or topic-specific Scan products.

• Support the project management and technical assembly of NBS Opportunity Scans

• Support the project management and technical assembly of Risk Analytics Damage and Risk Assessment activities

• Support the FCV Nexus with data for disaster resilience needs

• Other activities as requested by the Team Leader

Selection Criteria

• Education: A minimum of a Master’s degree or equivalent in a relevant field such as data science, geospatial technology, geography, environmental science, economics, statistics, international development or disaster risk management
• Subject Matter Experience: Demonstrated understanding or experience working with disaster risk, urban, or environmental data, as well as demonstrated understanding or experience in open-source software communities and development approaches, and open data concepts and approaches. Previous experience with World Bank operations in a relevant sector is desired.
• Motivation: 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
• Analytical Decision Making: Demonstrated ability to lead or contribute to high-level analytical work. Ability to analyze facts and data to support sound logical decision-making regarding one’s own, and others’ work.
• Leadership and Coordination: Ability to take responsibility for substantial segments of the unit’s work program and play a key role in implementing the strategic direction of the work program. Proven ability to identify the needed resources to accomplish results involving multiple stakeholders and the ability to find solutions to obstacles affecting key deliverables.
• Teamwork: Excellent interpersonal skills and proven ability to work in a team and intercultural environment, with demonstrated ability to build strong networks and teams to achieve results.
• Communication: Strong communication and advocacy skills, including ability to write concisely and clearly, and to synthesize complex documentation and ideas for a range of audiences. Emphasis on the visual expression of complex ideas.
• Language requirements: Written and spoken fluency in English is required, with proficiency in a second language (Spanish, French, or Arabic) desired

Diversity and Inclusion

The World Bank continually searches for qualified individuals with a diverse set of backgrounds from around the globe. We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability. Individuals with different abilities may be provided reasonable accommodations to perform essential functions and support in receiving other workplace accommodations.

Poverty has no borders, neither does excellence. We succeed because of our differences and we continuously search for qualified individuals with diverse backgrounds from around the globe.

ABSTRACT:

World Bank Junior Professional Associate United States World Bank Jobs 2024

World Bank looking for “Junior Professional Associate”. Applicants with an Advanced degree may apply on or before 09-Aug-24.

The World Bank has published a job vacancy announcement on 17/07/2024 for qualified applicants to fill in the vacant post of Junior Professional Associate to be based in Washington DC , United States. For more jobs, please visit https://unjoblink.org

Company Name: World Bank

Job Title: Junior Professional Associate

Duty Station: Washington DC , United States

Country: United States

Application Deadline: 09-Aug-24

This job has expired.