Gabriela Guimarães Nobre

HS Hydrological Sciences

The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Gabriela Guimarães Nobre for the poster/PICO entitled:

Forecasting and coping with maize yield anomalies through cash transfers in Kenya (Guimarães Nobre, G.; Davenport, F.; Bischiniotis, K.; Veldkamp, T.; Jongman, B.; Ward, P.; Funk, C.C.; Husak, G.; Aerts, J.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Gabriela is a Ph.D. researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her overall research is focused on water and climate risks, as part of the H2020 IMPREX project. More specifically, her thesis aims on understanding how seasonal climate variability and large-scale atmospheric oscillations can be used as early warning predictors of flood, agricultural drought and food security risks; and as drivers of disaster risk financing mechanisms on both developed and developing countries.
The presented PICO evaluates the potential cost-effectiveness of cash transfer responses, comparing the relative costs of cash transfers before (ex-ante) and after (ex-post) drought events in five districts in Kenya. For that, a forecast model using Fast-and Frugal Trees was developed that unravels early warning relationships between climate variability, vegetation coverage, and maize yields at multiple lead times. Results indicate that the developed models predict the majority of the low maize yield events in all districts, even six months before harvesting. Overall, this study shows show that cash transfers ex-ante can often be more cost-effective than ex-post.