COP31 Health Pavilion Side Event - “Nothing About Us Without Us”: Disability-Inclusive Data and Decision-Making for Climate-Resilient Health Systems

Climate-resilient health systems depend on knowing who is at risk, where they are, what barriers they face, and whether climate-health interventions reach those most vulnerable. Yet disability-disaggregated data and lived experiences are rarely integrated into climate-risk and health planning. Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) face disproportionate health risks from heat, flooding and cyclones, yet remain largely excluded when cities design climate and health responses. A health system cannot be fully resilient if it cannot identify, reach and respond to the populations most affected by climate shocks.

This session presents a working proof of concept, piloted in Visakhapatnam, India through the PI4Cities (Participatory Intelligence for Inclusive Resilience in Cities) project. The model embeds disability-inclusive, AI/GIS-enabled data collection (chatbot and QR-based reporting, vulnerability dashboards) directly into municipal decision-making, alongside co-designed physical interventions. Speakers will share practical pathways to move disability inclusion from a stated principle to an operational feature of city-level climate-health systems, and enabling conditions that can assist replication in other Global South cities.

Background

The session is organized by UNU-VIE together with GDF, TERI and Civic Data Lab. It stems from the PI4Cities project, which proactively engages PwDs as co-designers and decisionmakers alongside municipal officials, technical experts and community-based actors. The session links disability inclusion to practical health-system resilience by identifying and closing barriers to accessing health facilities, early-warning systems, emergency response and essential services during climate hazards.

The session contributes to the COP31 priority themes of Dynamic and Resilient Health Systems, Climate-Resilient Cities, and Powering Climate Action: Financial & Institutional Boost. Its thematic focus covers adaptation, health systems, transport and cities, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), disaster resilience and response, and extreme heat.

Objectives

• Illustrate tools that can assist disability-inclusive climate-health governance at city level, drawing on a real, ongoing implementation case and the institutional pathway from data to action.
• Demonstrate how AI/GIS-enabled tools and accessible reporting channels can bring the lived experience of PwDs into municipal climate and health decision-making.
• Examine enablers (capacity, financing, institutional arrangements) to replicate and scale such models in other Global South cities, health systems and hazard contexts.

Presenters will demonstrate:

Frontier technologies for inclusive data. A dynamic vulnerability and accessibility dashboard-based approach combining GIS hazard layers (flood zones, extreme-heat hotspots) with citizen-reported accessibility data; accessible, low-barrier chatbot and QR-code-based reporting channels that address the digital-exclusion gap; and AI/LLM-assisted analytics for prioritized, actionable recommendations for municipal decisionmakers.

Participatory governance. Co-creation with PwDs as co-designers and decisionmakers, including a disability-adapted Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) tool and the co-designed physical retrofits that could result from it (step-free access, tactile wayfinding, shaded rest areas, accessible early-warning signage).

Institutional pathways from data to action. Community-generated data feeding risk identification, prioritization, municipal and health planning, budgeting and investment, and adaptation and service delivery, embedded in ward-level SOPs, planning processes and participatory budgeting so that it outlives the pilot.

Expected outputs and gains

Insights into an ongoing approach to disability-inclusive, AI-enabled urban governance and the lessons from its implementation in Visakhapatnam, India.

A clearer understanding of the means of implementation needed to mainstream disability inclusion in climate action, including through global climate funding.

Policy-relevant lessons and recommendations on transferability to other cities and health systems.

Run of show

Speakers, moderator and coordination

• Moderator and local coordinator on the ground: Emmanuel Cheo, Head of Team, UNU-VIE cheo@vie.unu.edu
• Senior representative, United Nations Global Disability Fund (GDF)
• Director, Civic Data Lab (CDL)
• Senior Director, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
• Invited expert speaker for policy reflection (tbc)
• Focal point: Himanshu Shekhar, UNU VIE, shekhar@ehs.unu.edu