NAXA has received the prestigious GSMA Innovation Fund for Anticipatory Humanitarian Action 2023, supporting our project, ACT FIRST, which takes an integrated approach to disaster risk management. Through the GSMA Fund, NAXA, together with its partners, Institute of Himalayan Risk Reduction (IHRR) and Viamo Nepal, will scale the Anticipatory Action platform, known as Digital and Spatial Technologies for Anticipatory Action (DASTAA), to flood-prone areas of the lower Karnali basin. The goal is to enhance anticipatory actions and mitigate disaster impacts at the household level, benefiting over 60,000 households. This approach involves assessing the disaster risks of each household before flooding, monitoring thresholds, and enabling local government and humanitarian agencies to make informed decisions for targeted disaster preparedness and recovery efforts.

NAXA has successfully secured the competitive ADPC iCARE (Climate Adaptation and Resilience for South Asia 2023) grant to scale Digital and Spatial Technologies for Anticipatory Action (DASTAA) to 9,000 households of Nepal and Bangladesh. Through this project, the project team will integrate risk and weather information in DASTAA mobile app to provide risk and localized weather updates including early warnings and early actions, ensuring easy and timely access to forecasts and near real-time observations for households. This information will also be accessible to the general public through a public dashboard, ensuring broader community awareness and preparedness. Furthermore, local governments will have comprehensive access to all risk and weather data generated by this project through a dedicated municipal dashboard, enabling them to make informed decisions and design targeted Disaster Risk Reduction/Management Programs.

Development of AI-Integrated Seismic Structural Damage Assessment Tool Using Real Images of Earthquake Damaged Buildings. NAXA worked as a technology consulting partner for Build change, a social enterprise that works to save lives in earthquakes and windstorms by working with people in emerging nations to build homes and schools that will protect their families. The technical team developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) integrated tool that analyzes and assess the structural damages to the buildings by the help of images taken and submitted by house-owners and decides whether the buildings can be retrofitted or not, based on the Go/No-Go criteria for seismic retrofitting. The tool became the first runner up on the 2020 Call for Code global challenge organized by IBM.

NAXA was awarded with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center’s (ADPC) Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC) 2021 Grant in the thematic area: Risk Financing Solutions. NAXA developed a software system with customizable toolkits capable of assessing household level vulnerability and risk factors. The system provides both spatial and attributes visualization of household vulnerability and risk, thus serving as a decision-making tool for the government or humanitarian agencies in evidence-based risk financing. In addition, Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan (DPRP) can be auto generated from the system for each house to be used during emergency situations.

NAXA and a team of consulting companies designed and developed Hamro Swasthya, a Covid-19 dedicated mobile and web application for the Ministry of Health immediately after the Covid-19 lockdown was announced in Nepal for the first time. The app later became the only government app with the highest number of users and the web app was used by more than 5 millions to assess Covid-19 related first hand information in the immediate covid-19 context in the country. “Hamro Swasthya'' was later on awarded the “Jury Mention ICT Award 2020” in a special event held in Kathmandu on 26th December 2020. The ICT Award celebrates national excellence in the discipline of IT sectors in Nepal.