CERP Labs worked with the World Bank, to design a dashboard to help the government allocate food resources to neighbourhoods where livelihood and income was directly affected by COVID-19 lockdowns. The onset of COVID-19 and the blanket lockdowns across Pakistan implied large disruptions to income for workers in both the formal and informal sector. With many Pakistanis living at or near subsistence levels and dependent on daily wages, there were concerns that the lockdown would result in large-scale deprivation of basic necessities. CERP Labs visualised data coming from automatic phone surveys run in 34 neighbourhoods of Karachi targeting Katchi Abadis. Indicators derived from waves of surveys and plotted on an interactive map showed hotspots in neighbourhoods in which people had lost all their income, did not have money for a week’s worth of food supplies, did not have access to free rations in their neighbourhoods, and went to bed hungry the previous night. The World Bank and CERP are looking to take these capabilities to more cities in Pakistan, and provide comprehensive disaster relief support wherever possible.
