Technological advancements and innovation are creating new opportunities for acting earlier to ensure information reaches those who need it the most. This session highlighted different technological advancements supporting anticipatory action, including the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), digital flood forecasting in Bangladesh and ICT innovations enhancing women's access to information.
Karin Metz, IFRC Alert Hub Project Management Consultant, explained how emergency alerts are often sent out without guidance on what to do or the information is inconsistent or too technical. CAP bridges this gap by working across many broadcasting and dissemination channels to quickly disseminate alerts over multiple alerting methods. CAP is interoperable, can be easily implemented and integrated into many systems. The IFRC Alert Hub is expanding the use of CAP to at-risk communities by working with and through National Societies to strengthen emergency alerting.
Dr. Antony Gnanamuthu, IFRC’s Operation Manager for South Asia, made it clear that in the wake of disaster, women are more vulnerable and more likely to die than men. There are huge gaps in women’s access to ICT, where women are 32% less likely to own a mobile device or have access to one. He presented two case studies from Pakistan and Uganda, which successfully empowered and trained women to use ICT to improve their livelihood. He also recognised the need to further increase womens’ access to, and ownership of information.
Md Arifuzzaman Bhuyan, Executive Engineer with the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), and Md. Shahjahan, Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS) FbF Project Coordinator, explained how the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre in Bangladesh is providing flood forecast information and supporting community level warning dissemination via push notifications to smart phones through support from mobile phone operators and Google. The warning information includes forecasted river depth, the expected rise or fall in river depth and an inundation map visualised in Google maps. Warning information is also disseminated from the national level to the village level through SMS, WhatsApp and social media. When information is received, Village Disaster Management Committees take early actions including warning dissemination to communities, food distribution preparation and coordination with BDRCS on alerting evacuation.