Result of Service

The consultant contributes to the successful implementation and expansion of the City Resilience Global Programme by providing high-quality technical expertise, analytical support, capacity-building services, and programme development assistance to partner cities, territories, and institutions. The consultant supports the achievement of UN-Habitat's objective of fostering inclusive, sustainable, climate-resilient, and risk-informed urban and territorial development by strengthening the capacity of public institutions, communities, and key stakeholders to understand risks, make informed decisions, mobilize resources, and implement integrated resilience and climate adaptation actions. The expected outcome is enhanced technical expertise and analytical support to the implementation, development, and expansion of the Programme, contributing to urban and territorial resilience, climate adaptation, risk-informed development, and capacity-building initiatives across partner cities, regions, and institutions.

Work Location

Homebase

Expected duration

6 months

Duties and Responsibilities

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the United Nations agency mandated by the General Assembly to promote socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable towns and cities. UN-Habitat works with national and local governments, civil society, academia, development partners, and the private sector to advance sustainable urbanization and improve the quality of life in human settlements worldwide. As the lead UN agency for sustainable urban development and human settlements, UN-Habitat plays a key role in supporting countries and local authorities to address increasing urban challenges, including climate change, disaster risk, environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, inequality, and vulnerability to shocks and stresses. Through its urban resilience programming, UN-Habitat promotes integrated, people-centered, and systems-based approaches that strengthen the capacity of cities and territories to anticipate, absorb, adapt, and transform in the face of current and future challenges. UN-Habitat's resilience work builds on global frameworks including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the New Urban Agenda, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, supporting local and regional governments in translating these commitments into effective action at territorial level. Recognizing that resilience challenges extend beyond administrative boundaries, UN-Habitat supports multi-level governance approaches that strengthen coordination among cities, metropolitan areas, regions, and national institutions. Its resilience interventions combine risk-informed planning, climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, urban regeneration, nature-based solutions, governance strengthening, and inclusive stakeholder engagement to support sustainable territorial development. The programme works closely with local and regional governments, public institutions, civil society organizations, community groups, academia, and development partners to design and implement resilience-building initiatives. Attention is given to vulnerable populations, including women, youth, older persons, displaced populations, and other groups disproportionately affected by climate change, disasters, and socio-economic shocks. Under the direct supervision of the Head of the City Resilience Global Programme (CRGP), the consultant will provide technical expertise and analytical support for the enhancement, deployment, and scaling of the City Resilience Profiling Interactive Tool (CRPiT), including the development of advanced analytical functionalities, support to the NewMed2030 programme, and capacity-building activities. Task 1: Provide Technical Support to enhance the CRPiT Platform:

Improve the functionality, usability, performance and scalability of the City Resilience Profiling Interactive Tool (CRPiT), considering user feedback and programme requirements.
Support in strengthening the integration of geospatial data, resilience indicators, interactive visualizations and downloadable outputs.
Together with the technical team to ensure the timely delivery, testing and deployment of agreed technical outputs. . Task 2: Provide Technical Support for development of Advanced Analytical Functionalities:
Develop functionalities to compare the resilience profile of the same city or territory across different periods of time.
Develop and test pilot Artificial Intelligence-assisted capabilities to support the preliminary interpretation of resilience indicators, trends, strengths and vulnerabilities. All AI-assisted outputs shall be clearly identified as preliminary and subject to human validation before deployment. Support the development and dissemination of guidance materials, toolkits, case studies, and knowledge products related to resilience-building. Task 3: Support Adaptation of CRPiT to NewMed2030 Requirements and Global Replicability:
Adapt and configurate CRPiT modules according to the methodological, territorial and data requirements of the NewMed2030 programme, including modifications to indicator sets, workflows and visualization configurations, while ensuring replicability across other CRGP implementations.
Support the development of multilingual and translation functionalities to facilitate the use of CRPiT across different regional and linguistic contexts.
Contribute to the design and validation of a globally adaptable CRPiT configuration that can be replicated in different urban and regional contexts. Task 4: Support Generation, Validation and Replication of Resilience Profiles:
Generate the initial resilience profiles for the eight participating NewMed2030 localities to support local participatory validation processes.
Incorporate technical feedback, validation results and supplementary datasets arising from stakeholder consultations.
Generate additional resilience profiles in other urban and regional contexts, as agreed with CRGP, to assess the applicability, comparability and replicability of the enhanced CRPiT module.
Ensure that all resilience profiles are developed following established methodological and quality assurance standards. Task 5: Testing, Deployment and Documentation:
Conduct technical testing, troubleshooting and quality assurance of the platform and its analytical functionalities.
Support deployment of the agreed functional version and develop necessary technical and user documentation
Provide training to the team in the use, administration, updating and basic maintenance of the tool.
Ensure appropriate knowledge transfer to the CRGP technical team.

Qualifications/special skills

Advanced university degree or equivalent professional qualification in urban and regional planning, urban studies, urban geography, development studies, or public policy for the consultancy with knowledge of Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field is required. - A 1st level university degree with two qualified years of experience will be accepted in lieu of the advance degree. A minimum of five (5) years of progressively responsible professional experience in urban planning, urban and territorial resilience, GIS, software development, geospatial data engineering or related fields is required. At least two (2) years of specialized experience developing interactive, data-driven web applications or Web GIS platforms is required. Experience developing and maintaining automated geospatial data-processing workflows using Python is required. Experience integrating front-end applications with back-end services, APIs and SQL-based data structures is required. - Practical experience with web technologies, geospatial processing tools, mapping libraries and version-control systems relevant to the CRPiT technology stack is required. Experience processing and visualizing vector, raster, statistical and time-series data is desirable. Experience supporting local governments, international organizations or development programmes is desirable Experience with data analysis, visualization, and reporting tools is desirable Experience in the Mediterranean or MENA region, particularly Lebanon or Morocco, is an asset. Ability to work independently and manage multiple assignments under tight deadlines is desirable Ability to work effectively in multicultural and multidisciplinary teams is desirable Commitment to gender equality, inclusion, and the empowerment of vulnerable and marginalized groups is desirable Commitment to the principles and values of the United Nations is desirable

Languages

Fluency in spoken and written English is required. - Knowledge of other UN languages would be an additional asset. - Knowledge of French and/or Arabic is desirable.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.

Geospatial Full-Stack Developer and Data Engineer Consultant