For the second annual edition of its Haze Outlook, the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) teamed up with Segi Enam Advisors to provide a risk assessment report on the transboundary haze incident within the ASEAN region for the year 2020. Officially published last Thursday, our findings indicate a moderate risk of a severe transboundary haze incident in 2020. While weather outlook remains favourable, the Covid-19 pandemic has raised justifiable concerns about Indonesia's preparedness to deal with the fires and haze.

As co-authors, Segi Enam Advisors collated and examined qualitative and quantitative data from relevant literature published throughout the recent years. Working on a weather-peat-people framework, we looked at the latest academic research on, inter alia, peatland management and fire prevention as well policies and efforts with regard to the same. We also collected and analysed weather data, i.e. temperature and rainfall conditions, to complete the overall risk assessment of a haze for the year 2020.

Segi Enam also provided geospatial analysis of two key areas of fires incidences in the Riau and Central Kalimantan regions (please refer to Appendix A of the report). The two case studies give a geographical overview of the aforementioned areas as well as an analysis of hotspot locations detected in 2015 and 2019.