are we using it to full advantage?
Flooding in Pakistan, New Zealand, and now Frankfurt; earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, wildfires in Greece, Canada, and now Hawaii. Around the world, in our changing climate, disasters strike communities with seeming increasing frequency. ‘Unprecedented’… ‘catastrophic’… ‘out-of-control’ are words that pepper our media.
A decade ago the IFRC World Disaster Report wrote ‘When disaster strikes, access to information is as important as access to food and water.’ The same is true now. Shared information, and the links that enable it, are critical if societies like ours are to prevent, prepare for, respond to, recover from and remain resilient in the face of natural events that occur with increasing cost.
Data modelling and its public release makes risk information available to communities. Technology is its fundamental enabler, and of our current warning systems. It empowers community education about what to do when warnings are received. Vulnerability assessments, through data analysis, helps target aid. Money transfer that we take for granted is re-enabled through quickly-restored mobile phone connectivity. Regular feedback from people affected is delivered by resilient communications and influences programmes intended to help them. And social media helps communities discover, develop and disseminate their own view of risks, results and responses - and to ask questions of those accountable.
At UBH we are using the power of people, process and technology to give our clients the edge; to head off emergencies before they happen. One way to give authorities a clear course through the sea of information is to fuse the most relevant data in a shared common operating picture.
The Australian Antarctic Division operates in the interests of Australia in one of the worlds most remote and forbidding environments. In recent months UBH and AAD have put in place just such a data fusion capability, enabling the safety of expeditioners on one of the most important Antarctic science projects ever done by Australia – to provide new information to test climate models. It has been a clear demonstration of people process and technology coming together.
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